Word: mindanao
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...cynical electorate hopes so. The outrage still brewing over the Nov. 23 election-related massacre on Mindanao echoes the public sentiment felt in during 2007 mid-term polls when three poll watchers were burned alive after armed men torched a school building holding ballot boxes during the manual vote-count...
Even for a country long hardened to election violence, the massacre of at least 57 defenseless civilians on the main southern island of Mindanao, many of them relatives and supporters of a local politician and a large group of journalists, sets a new low. This troubled corner of the Philippines usually makes headlines for its long-running Muslim separatist rebellion. But the killings starkly exposed a nationwide malaise: the fierce competition for regional power among the country's small élite of a few hundred families and clans that control an inordinate amount of the national wealth - and the desperate...
...prime suspect behind the massacre, who was taken into custody on Thursday, is a member of one of Mindanao's leading Muslim political clans: the Ampatuans. They are close allies of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's administration in Manila and rule Maguindanao, a hardscrabble province in an autonomous area for Muslims. Andal Ampatuan Jr., a Maguindanao mayor in his 40s, was expected to be charged with murder, according to local reports, quoting justice authorities. Ampatuan denies involvement: "The reason I came out is to prove that I am not hiding and that I am not guilty," he told local reporters...
...authorities are now desperately trying to prevent a revenge-driven clan war - or "rido" as it is called in Mindanao - between the two families. A day after the killings, Arroyo put two southern provinces and a city under a state of emergency and deployed more troops to the area. All permits to carry firearms there have been canceled. "Retaliatory violence can be expected although a small chink of hope remains that Mangudadatu may rise above rido and avert further bloodshed," says Ian Bryson, a regional analyst at Singapore-based Control Risks...
...until the Mangudadatu's last year announced their challenge to governorship. The Ampatuans are not a family to be crossed: the clan is known to run its own private army; some estimates put its strength at between 200 and 500 men. To be sure, warlordism is not unique to Mindanao; it afflicts other parts of the archipelago and the northern province of Abra is practically a byword for political vendettas. But it is highly prevalent in Mindanao's conflict-affected areas where there is a large array of armed groups that include separatist rebels, civilian militias and well-established crime...