Urgent Appeal: Crackdown on Malaysian Socialists (tags)
Manila -- Around 70 members of Partido Lakas ng Masa (Party of the Laboring Masses - PLM) held a brief picket in front of the Malaysian Embassy this morning to protest the arrests and detention of 30 activists belonging to the Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM).
MILF Hits Stalled Peace Talks with GRP (tags)
The US based EPCC NEWS learned today from Cotabato City that a senior official of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front has expressed his doubt about the resumption of peace talks with the government by January in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, even as he has called for the release of all MILF members in prison. In in a statement issued Sunday to media sources in the Philippines said that MILF chief negotiator Mohagher Iqbal doubted whether that would happen. “Without a facilitator, how would the talks resume? The government's continued character assassination of the Malaysian facilitator is not doing any good to the peace process,” he said.
CDIR Condemns Malaysia's expulsion plan Against Immigrants (tags)
The Coalition in Defense of Immigrant Rights (CDIR)-USA strongly condemns Malaysia’s plan to chase out tens of thousands of Filipino and Indonesian illegal immigrants. The CDIR-USA said that immigrants include a large number of asylum seekers and refugees who had fled from the conflict-ridden Mindanao region in the southern Philippines to Malaysia's eastern Sabah state on Borneo island. In addition,the CDIR noted that many are stateless people and migrants who had lived in Sabah for more than a decade, including children who now risk being expelled. The CDIR said that the simplistic and arbitrary action of mass crackdown by the federal government in addressing such a serious and complex issue will result into serious human rights and humanitarian crisis,"
Tensions in Mindanao seen to rise as peacekeepers pull out (tags)
Malaysian peacekeepers began a phased withdrawal from the Philippines' troubled south on Saturday, raising worries that decades of Muslim rebellion in the mainly Catholic nation may resume. Twenty-eight of 41 Malaysian soldiers and police officers were picked up by two army transport planes at three points on the southern island of Mindanao and flown to a base in the Malaysian province of Sabah. The remnants of the 60-member International Monitoring Team (IMT), including 10 soldiers from Brunei, eight from Libya and a Japanese development worker, were expected to pack their bags and go home by the end of August.
RP ‘surprised’ at Malaysia monitors’ pullout (tags)
he Philippines on Tuesday said it was surprised at Malaysia’s decision to end its monitoring mission to the troubled southern Mindanao island this year. The government’s chief peace adviser Jesus Dureza said he had just finished a trip to Kuala Lumpur and officials there had given “no indication of any announcement of total withdrawal.” “I feel that we, as neighbors, should be working very closely for peace,” Dureza said. “I am confident that Malaysia will be with us all the way.”
Ermita, 2 Cabinet men ‘spoilers’ of talks — MILF (tags)
he Moro Islamic Libe-ration Front (MILF) has accused the Arroyo administration of being a “spoiler” of the peace negotiations, noting that three Cabinet officials are “steering the talks to an unknown direction,” saying like before the MILF is being tricked. MILF secretariat chair-man Muhammad Ameen, in a statement posted on the group’s Web site, yesterday also doubted President Arroyo’s sincerity in signing a peace agreement before she steps down in 2010. “There are many spoilers of the peace process espe-cially in Mindanao, but all those are secondary, and the main or worst spoilers are those in the govern-ment itself,” he noted.