More than 300 Moro residents here and elsewhere in the region spill into the streets and a public park here and hang green streamers and buntings in a festive mood to celebrate what they say is “historic” day for the Bangsamoro communities here, as Malacanang and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) signed the peace pact today.
A village chieftain here lambasted the military for forcing residents to sign a document that would portray them as “NPA (New People’s Army) surrenderees.”
Mayor Rodrigo Duterte and a former head of the government’s peace panel said that if senior communist leaders Benito Tiamzon and Wilma Austria who were arrested Saturday showed genuine immunity papers, they “should be released” because the government should “honor what we have committed to the people and to the CPP (Communist Party of the Philippines).”
A Manobo tribal leader in Davao Del Norte claimed that new troops sent near their village threatened both men and women and scared schoolchildren as they accused the village of harboring New People’s Army guerrillas.
Only twenty to thirty percent of stray dogs snared daily are redeemed by their owners, said the Animal Control Unit of the Office of the City Veterinarian.
A leader of a Moro organization here said that there is still hope for peace in the country if the “corrupt government” will be headed by Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte.
Emergency responders who were hit by explosives of the New People’s Army during the latter’s operations against government forces last March 2 received indemnification Monday through church leaders.
Residents of Typhoon Pablo (International Name: Haiyan)-hit town of Cateel, Davao Oriental said they were discouraged by a barangay official and an Army officer from joining a rally last month that demanded “fair distribution of food and other relief materials”.
After their successive attacks on police and military troops in Matanao, Davao del Sur, the New People’s Army issued a statement saying their attacks were “punishment” for protecting a mining company and criminal syndicates.
Sheena Duazo, spokesperson of the militant Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, said during a press conference Wednesday that they would like to put the incident “on record,” adding that the case was “part of a pattern of surveillance and monitoring which many us in the progressive group have become targets of.”
