From the Revd Canon Barry Naylor
Sir, — I read with interest Vincent McKee’s informative article (Comment, 15 August) on the situation in Mindanao in the southern Philippines.
On that same day, Fr Rex Reyes, general secretary of the National Council of Churches in the Philippines, issued a statement saying that the NCCP fully endorsed the peace negotiations between the government of the Republic of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The NCCP sees principled negotiations between the two parties as an essential path towards a just and lasting peace. There are, undoubtedly, issues regarding the acceptability of the present proposals.
In its support for the struggle of the Bangsomoro people for self-determination, the NCCP, and other concerned organisations, are worried that some of the government’s intentions in this current proposal are to “further liberalise the economy and exacerbate the plunder of the remaining natural wealth in Mindanao and elsewhere in the archipelago to advance foreign business interests at the people’s expense”.
There is widespread concern that the government of the Philippines will use its pretended generosity to the MILF to prolong the informal talks and ceasefire, and to deploy larger US and Philippine military forces against the MILF and the Bangsomoro.
During the time I spent in Mindanao, I stayed in a Muslim barangay (village) and met several leaders of the MILF, and Christian leaders from Mindanao, who were working in close collaboration for peace, for justice, and for the right to self-determination. I was impressed with the mutual respect and understanding I experienced between Christians and Muslims there.
Dr McKee wrote of the killing of soldiers, the kidnapping of others, and of the murder of a Roman Catholic priest in the conflict in Mindanao. We need to remember that, as horrible and reprehensible as these events are, they must be put in the perspective of events throughout the Philippines, where the killings are just as bad.
In this Asian Christian land, since 2001, 27 churchpeople, including Bishop Alberto Raiment and 20 United Church of the Philippines pastors and lay workers, have been victims of extra-judicial killings — as well as numerous lawyers, journalists, trade unionists, peasants, and fisher folk. To date, none of the assailants has been brought to justice. The perpetrators of many of these crimes are believed to be shadowy military and police hit-squads.
Attacks on the liberty, life, and dignity of the Filipino people continue — the perpetrators must be condemned, whoever they are.
Dr McKee speaks of the possibility of the “abandonment of 900,000 Christians and indigenous people (in Mindanao) to an uncertain future in a hostile sub-state”. I personally, know of Christian pastors and lay people in the Philippines, outside Mindanao, who already feel they are living with an uncertain future in a hostile state, not knowing if they will return home at the end of the day
to lie in their bed, or to lie in a mortuary with an assassin’s bullet through their head.
The whole nation is crying out for justice, for an end to corruption, and for a decent and legitimate administration. Within this nation, the Bangsomoro people and other indigenous groups most certainly deserve the right of self-determination, and the right to
live free from fear and from social and economic exploitation.
BARRY NAYLOR
1 Kirby Road,
Leicester LE3 6BD