It is sad that just as the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation front is on the brink of a peace settlement with the pending establishment of the Bangsamoro region, the uneasy peace in Mindanao is being disturbed.
Forces loyal to Nur Misuari of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) attacked the city of Zamboanga Monday, killing at least six people, taking hostage many others and paralyzing the locale.
These violent forces must be reminded of the irony of their move.
They cried foul over the government’s perceived abandonment of their commitment to a 1996 peace agreement.
But the MNLF’s own response to the slight betrays a poor valuation of peace.
Peace may be the fruit of injustice but holding the former hostage to violence is a perpetration of injustice that must be resisted at all costs.
Mindanao has been reeling in recent weeks because of sporadic and so far unsolved bombings in places such as Cagayan de Oro City and North Cotabato.
A siege on Zamboanga is the last thing Mindanao needs.
What the MNLF’s 300 rebels have done is as vile as a mother’s torture of her own baby to compel a father to provide for the infant.
Zamboanga is not part of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) over which Misuari and the MNLF used to hold sway.
Yet its attackers are mistaken if they think one way or another that ARMM would be insulated from the ramifications of a Zamboanga City brought to grief.
The violent elements of the MNLF have just sent down the drain decades of work by its peaceable members, the government and ordinary citizens to rehabilitate Mindanao and its war-ravaged reputation.
Cebu with the harmonious interaction of its indigenous, Islamic, Christian and other communities can only hope for peace in Mindanao.
We hope that the saner voices in the MNLF will prevail. Spokesman Habib Salamat has distanced the organization from the attack on Zamboanga that he condemned.
Important figures like Muslim clerics must weigh in on the call for peace and a return to normalcy.
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