Filipino talks with separatists seriously set back

By Carlos H. Conde
International Herald Tribune
The New York Times
Published: December 16, 2007

MANILA: Negotiations between the Philippine government and Islamic separatists suffered a serious setback during the weekend after the insurgents accused Manila of unilaterally changing the essence of the draft for a key agreement.

Officials for the rebel group said Sunday that the changes regarding ancestral homelands pushed the decade-old negotiations back to square one.

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s negotiating panel refused to see government negotiators at their scheduled meeting in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday.

“We decided not to meet them because the draft they prepared was objectionable,” said Michael Mastura, a negotiator for the front. “The government reneged on earlier agreements.”

Mohagher Iqbal, chairman of the rebel panel, said the government’s action was “like changing the rules in the middle of the game.” He said restarting the talks, which Malaysia has been facilitating since 2001, “is now entirely up to the government.”

“There have been differences in the proposed text on concepts of territory and resources, including elements of governance,” Rodolfo Garcia, the chief government negotiator, told The Associated Press in Kuala Lumpur.

Ancestral domain had been a sensitive issue since last year, and the failure by both sides to resolve it has dimmed the chances of a peace agreement anytime soon. Both sides earlier said they were hoping to sign an agreement by January, but Garcia said, “Realistically, given this present situation, it might be difficult to reach the target.”

Officials said the impasse was one of the most serious since talks began in 1997. According to Mastura, the government-prepared draft did away with some “substantive elements” both panels had agreed on since 2005.

“In the guise of editing the draft for styling purposes, they deleted references to ownership of ancestral domains,” Mastura said in an interview by phone from Kuala Lumpur. “But to us, ancestral domains is the meat and bones of the negotiations. By removing the ownership aspect of it from the draft, the government ignored a consensus point that had earlier been deliberated, agreed upon and signed by both sides.”

In February 2006, both sides issued a statement saying that they had reached a “joint determination of the scope” of the Muslim homeland and that Filipino Muslims have the “right to utilize and develop their ancestral domain and ancestral lands.”

Mastura said the government also inserted references to the Philippine Constitution in its draft. “We are not pleased with it. We do not recognize the Philippine Constitution. The consensus points never referred to the Constitution,” he said.

Jesus Dureza, the presidential adviser on the peace process, said Sunday that the government was “agonizing” over how to address the ancestral domain issue without violating the Constitution, which forbids the state from surrendering sovereign rights over territories like those being claimed by the rebels.

“The challenge now is to find creative means to address ancestral domain,” Dureza said. “I am sure we can go around the Constitution without violating it.”

He asked the rebels to be patient. “We cannot forge an agreement only to have it thrown away because of constitutional problems,” he said. “If we are going to sign something, it should be implementable. That’s the bottom line.”

Philippine Muslim rebel groups agree to reconcile

By Carlos H. Conde
International Herald Tribune
Published: December 14, 2007

MANILA: Rival Islamic separatist groups in the Philippines have agreed to reconcile by next year, a pledge that raised hopes here that the decades-old insurgency in the south might finally come to an end, officials said Friday.

In a meeting Thursday with Seif el-Islam el-Qaddafi, son of Muammar el-Qaddafi, the leader of Libya, leaders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front said they should be able to resolve their differences, which date back to 1976, when the former broke away from the latter. The differences between the two groups over the scope of autonomous territory for Muslims have complicated the search for peace in the southern Philippines.

While other Islamic countries, like Malaysia, have been helping in the recent peace negotiations between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the government, Libya has played a special role in dealings with the two Muslim groups. It was Libya that brokered the 1976 Tripoli agreement between Manila and the Moro National Liberation Front. Soon after, several high-ranking liberation front leaders broke away and formed the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Qaddafi’s three-day visit “signified that the Muslim world is concerned with the problem in Mindanao. And any concern from Muslims countries and leaders, whether symbolic or substantive, gives a people desperate for peace a ray of hope,” said Abhoud Syed Lingga, the executive director of the Institute of Bangsamoro Studies, a nonprofit based in Mindanao that is monitoring the peace process.

Although the Moro National Liberation Front signed what was termed a “final peace agreement” with the government in 1996, Islamic separatism remained a problem because, according to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, that agreement failed to address fundamental issues, like the rights of Muslims to their ancestral domains and natural resources.

There were no details Friday on how the two groups are to resolve their problems, but officials said a reconciliation was necessary to develop the economy in the areas in Mindanao where most Filipino Muslims live.

“We promised to iron out whatever differences we have had in the past not later than September 2008 and come up with a single road map to develop Muslim communities in the south,” said Eid Kabalu, a spokesman for the Islamic front who attended the meeting, according to Reuters. He described the five-hour meeting with Qaddafi as “productive.” Kabalu said that a reconciliation does not mean a unification of the two groups, who control separate provinces in the Muslim areas in the south.

Filipino officials, peace advocates and leaders of the Organization of Islamic Conference have long urged the two groups to settle their disputes to make it easier for the Philippine government to deal with the conflict. The Moro National Liberation Front, as part of its peace settlement with Manila, has been managing a seven-province Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, but it has been criticized for failing to develop the economy in the region.

More than 120,000 people, mostly Muslims, have died in the separatist conflict, according to the government.

14 members of Abu Sayyaf convicted in resort-island kidnapping

By Carlos H. Conde
International Herald Tribune
Published: December 6, 2007

MANILA: A Philippine court on Thursday convicted 14 members of the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group in the kidnapping of 20 people off an island resort in 2001, an incident in which two Americans were subsequently killed, one of them beheaded.

The 14 militants were sentenced to life imprisonment. Four others, including Satra Tilao, sister of the late Abu Sabaya, one of the leaders of Abu Sayyaf, were acquitted.

“We are satisfied with the judgment,” said Peter Medalle, a state prosecutor.

“This is a triumph of justice, another battle won in our fight against terrorism,” said Lieutenant Colonel Ernesto Torres, an army spokesman. “This is a source of encouragement for our soldiers in the front lines.”

Robert Courtney, a Department of Justice attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Manila, said the verdict “sends a strong message about the capability of Philippine law enforcement to deal with terrorist activities.”

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, the U.S. military has sent thousands of troops to the Philippines to help fight Abu Sayyaf, an Islamic extremist group that terrorism experts and officials believe is linked to Jemaah Islamiyah, the Southeast Asian terrorist network with connections to Al Qaeda.

Abu Sayyaf operates mainly in the southern Philippines but has carried out attacks in Manila over the past five years. As a result of the U.S.-backed military actions, several of the group’s top officers, including its leader, Khaddafy Janjalani, have been killed, and its numbers have dwindled to 300 from more than 1,000 in 2001, according to government officials.

Sabaya was killed in 2002 during a U.S.-supported military operation intended to rescue Martin and Gracia Burnham, missionaries from Wichita, Kansas. Martin Burnham and a Filipino nurse, Ediborah Yap, were killed in the rescue attempt, but Gracia Burnham was rescued. Prior to the rescue, Guillermo Sobero, a Peruvian-born American from California, had been beheaded.

Gracia Burnham later went back to Kansas and wrote a book about the 13-month ordeal, which began on the night of May 27, 2001, when Abu Sayyaf gunmen on speedboats snatched the 20 hostages from the Dos Palmas resort, a popular tourist destination on Palawan Island in the southwestern Philippines. The Burnhams were there celebrating their 18th wedding anniversary.

The militants brought the hostages to Basilan Island, which was Abu Sayyaf’s base of operations at the time. Intensified U.S.-backed military operations later drove the group off Basilan.

Some of the hostages paid ransom and were freed. There were accusations of collusion between Abu Sayyaf and some elements of the military, particularly after the kidnappers managed to escape from a hospital in Basilan that had been literally surrounded by soldiers. A subsequent Senate investigation later found “circumstantial evidence” of collusion between the militants and some civilian and military officials.

In her book, “In the Presence of My Enemies,” Burnham alleged that a Philippine general had colluded with Abu Sayyaf, even demanding half of the ransom paid for some of the hostages. The military has repeatedly denied these allegations.

Prosecutors originally charged 85 Abu Sayyaf suspects in the 2001 kidnappings. Twenty-three were captured, but four of them were killed when they tried to escape from a Manila prison in 2005. One of the remaining 19 suspects was cleared.

32 civilians linked to failed uprising at Manila hotel

By Carlos H. Conde
International Herald Tribune
Published: December 2, 2007

MANILA: The Philippine authorities said Sunday that they were investigating the involvement of 32 civilians, as well as members of the police force, in the failed uprising attempted last week by renegade military officers at a Manila hotel.

Avelino Razon, chief of the Philippine National Police, told reporters Sunday that the 32 “personalities,” whom he did not identify, had been briefed in advance about the plan to take over the luxury Peninsula Manila Hotel in Makati City, the capital’s business district, on Thursday in the hope of kick-starting another Philippine “people power” uprising.

He said each participant was promised 10,000 pesos, or $235, and that the plotters had tried to enlist bus operators in an attempt to mobilize people quickly. Razon said the Makati City police force was also under investigation for having failed to stop the plotters from marching to the hotel.

“We are firming up our case against these people by getting more evidence,” Razon said.

The revolt, in which the military officers and their supporters took control of the hotel and called for the ouster of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, was promptly quashed by the government, using SWAT teams, tanks and tear gas.

Leaders of the uprising, including Senator Antonio Trillanes 4th, a former naval officer, and Brigadier General Danilo Lim of the army, were arrested Thursday along with 49 other people, including a former vice president, Teofisto Guingona. They were charged with rebellion Saturday.

Arroyo announced a reward of 1 million pesos Saturday for turning in Captain Nicanor Faeldon of the Philippine Marines, one of the alleged leaders of the revolt. The police said Faeldon escaped at the height of the siege by disguising himself as a journalist. Three other officers are the subject of a nationwide manhunt.

“The transgressors will not hold this nation hostage with impunity,” Arroyo said Saturday. “They will be punished to the full extent of the law.”

The police said documents recovered at the hotel indicated that the revolt was part of a plot to install a civilian-military government, a newspaper reported. Asher Dolina, chief of the police’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, said Trillanes and the others planned to form a “revolutionary transition government,” according to The Philippine Daily Inquirer.

“They planned to hold on to power until the government stabilizes or all remnants of the regime are removed,” Dolina was quoted as saying. “Then they would call for elections.”

Dolina said that based on the documents, “the plans were very detailed, including the assignments of each member, the deployment of their firearms, from their descent to the elevator all the way to the march,” according to the paper.

Meanwhile, media groups in the Philippines and abroad denounced the police for having arrested 30 journalists who were covering the hotel uprising. The journalists were seen on TV being handled roughly by the police, handcuffed and hauled onto a police bus. All were released that same night.

“Never in the turbulent recent history of the Philippines has any government, including that of Ferdinand Marcos, ever taken into custody members of the media who were on the scene to do their jobs,” said the Manila-based Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, referring to the late Philippine dictator.