Word: mindanao
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...defense bands that have proved so strong a bulwark against subversion by the insurgent New People's Army that they have gained immense popular support. They present a unique and prickly political problem for the government of President Corazon Aquino. Now firmly established on the large southern island of Mindanao, they are beginning to spread to other parts of the country. Though separate from the renegade warlords and private armies that still plague areas of the Philippines, the vigilantes are part of a tradition that Aquino's government would like to stamp out. The new constitution calls for disbandment...
...parade snaked through the streets of Davao City last week, but the occasion was hardly festive. As thousands of residents on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao watched, the marchers carried 105 white wooden coffins containing the remains of civilians said to have been murdered by the Communist-led New People's Army. Headed by Army Lieut. Colonel Franco Calida, the procession included 3,000 members of the Alsa Masa, one of more than a score of private paramilitary groups that are waging war against the N.P.A. Every so often, pallbearers opened a coffin and showed the remains to onlookers...
...truce broke down last month amid bitter charges and countercharges. The Ministry of Defense estimates that at least 350 people have died since the fighting resumed. The violence often plays out in a lethal tit for tat. Last week, after government troops killed 13 guerrillas on the island of Mindanao, the rebels ambushed and killed 37 soldiers in two separate attacks. Meanwhile, a bomb ripped through the grandstand at the Philippine Military Academy in the resort town of Baguio. Since President Aquino was scheduled to attend a graduation ceremony there several days later, speculation abounded that she was the target...
Until the kidnaping, Aquino had ignored the Muslim separatist problem in Mindanao. Pushed into action, she ordered the army to "settle once and for all Lanao's problem of warlordism." The warlord that Aquino apparently had in mind was Ali Dimaporo, a Marcos loyalist who was dismissed as Governor of Lanao del Sur after Aquino took power and who, according to intelligence reports, commanded the loyalties of the kidnapers. Dimaporo denied his involvement...
Aquino, eager to defuse a genuine political crisis in Mindanao, ordered Muslim Affairs Minister Candu Muarip to study a 1976 agreement between the government and the Moro National Liberation Front that ended a separatist rebellion in Mindanao. Negotiations over implementing the agreement broke down in 1977, and Muslim activists claim the Marcos government reneged on a promise to grant autonomy to Mindanao. Said Professor Asiri Abubakar, of the University of the Philippines: "It's about time that the Aquino government gets a good grasp of the Muslim situation before it explodes again...