Assalaamu Alaikum. Ramadhan Al Mubarak!
Surah Al Baqarah Chapter 2:190: You should only fight those who commit aggression against you and leave you no option but to fight. This war will be in the way of Allah Almighty i.e. for the protection of humanity from tyranny and oppression – but even in this war the limits of Law must not be transgressed, for such transgression is against the Laws of Allah.
In observance of the Holy Month of Ramadan, the Moro Resistance and Liberation Organization urges the Moro people to live out the spirit and call of the Qur’an to pursue peace and justice and fight against oppression and tyranny by intensifying the struggle for the self-determination and frustrating the attacks of the US-Arroyo regime.
Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has fully abandoned its peace talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) by dismantling the peace negotiating panel. This regime has declared as futile to talk peace with the MILF, and has dealt with its commanders like ordinary criminals by issuing bounty and filing criminal cases against them in the local GRP court. This regime attempts to trap the MILF within the framework of “disarm, demobilize and rehabilitate,” a scheme meant to force the MILF into capitulation and for it to surrender its local commanders Ombra Kato and Bravo as pre-condition for any resumption of the peace negotiations.
The US-Arroyo regime is sharpening its fangs and is subjecting the Moro people to the wrath of the Oplan Bantay Laya (OBL), its counterrevolutionary operation that also targets progressive and revolutionary forces and the New People’s Army. This regime will intensify its fascist attacks against the Moro people, if one is to discern from the declaration of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) to pursue military offensives even during this time of the holy month of fasting.
It is only just for the MILF to fortify its principled stance with regards to the issue of ancestral domain. The Bangsamoro people continue to occupy their ancestral lands precisely because of the wars and armed struggles their revolutionary leaders have led and initiated in its defense over the last decades. The sad reality is that the reactionary state wants to narrow the ownership of Mindanao lands for the Moro people, as well as for the indigenous peoples and Christian settlers. The reactionary state endorses the continued dominance and exploitation of the marginalized by big landlords and bourgeois comprador.
The MRLO firmly believes it would be limiting for the Moro people to anchor its struggle on the right to self-determination on the memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain (MOA-AD) and the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) for these constrict the basis of the historical right of the Bangsamoro to its ancestral domain.
The MOA-AD binds the MILF and the Moro people in a compromise. The MOA-AD is a product of the consensus and concessions secured by the MILF in the peace negotiations. Because of its provision of “earned sovereignty approach,” the MILF can be held hostage anytime whenever the GRP wants to invoke the framework of the reactionary Constitution in the peace negotiations. Even then, as the MILF succumbed to this concept and compromised the whole framework of its struggle for Bangsamoro independence, the Arroyo regime used the Constitutional framework as basis for not signing the MOA-AD last August 5.
Further perusal in the MOA-AD would reveal that even though the US-Arroyo regime appeared generous towards the MILF by allowing it full rein over the natural resources within the Moro ancestral domain, it can always invoke the state of emergency anytime to reclaim the Moro areas back to the national control especially if the MILF attempts to use these resources to attack the central reactionary government.
Worse, the MOA-AD allows the entry of foreign corporations through joint missions with the BJE and direct investments to exploit the ancestral territories. The US regime can always take advantage of this provision to exploit the natural resources of Mindanao limitlessly, such as by fully utilizing the oil reserves of Sulu Sea Basin and the Liguasan Marsh.
Thus the MRLO urges the MILF to continue to pursue the path of revolutionary armed struggle and to unite with other revolutionary forces to fight the fascist US-Arroyo regime. The struggle for the right to ancestral domain must continue and commanders who are engaged in tactical offensives against the AFP and the interventionist US troops must be fully supported.
The Bangsamoro struggle for self-determination and the secession from the semi-colonial US-Arroyo regime are legitimate rights. The revolutionary armed struggle is all the more legitimate in the defense of the Moro people who are suffering from a tyrannical regime that exploits its ancestral lands, exploits the cheap labor of its workers and continue to oppress the Moro people.
The MRLO further urges the Moro people to repudiate ethnocentrism and for the Christians to renounce Christian chauvinism to prevent few warlords like vice-governor Manny Piol from exploiting the anti-Moro hysteria to serve their own interest.
The MRLO also calls on the Moro people to join its ranks and intensify the struggle for self determination within the framework of the national democratic movement. The MRLO hopes that the tactical alliance between the MILF and the National Democratic Front will continue to prosper where the latter fully supports the Moro people’s right and struggle for self-determination. Joint tactical offensives should be launched at an ever increasing scale to frustrate the military offensives of the US-Arroyo regime. Agrarian revolution should also prosper in Moro communities to ensure that it would be the Moro peasants who would benefit in the struggle for the Bangsamoro’s ancestral domain. #
(Sgd.) Kasamang Omar Mukhtar
Secretary General
Moro Resistance and Liberation Organization
