Word: mindanao
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...evening prayers, the cloistered silence of the hilltop Carmelite convent in Marawi City was shattered by shouts and shrieks. Thirteen armed men barged in and took ten Filipino nuns hostage. Less than 24 hours later, another group of men grabbed Brian Lawrence, an American Protestant missionary living at the Mindanao State University near the Carmelite convent...
...confronted with another potentially dangerous crisis. The motives behind last week's snatchings were muddled in the curious combination of banditry and political activism that has turned kidnaping into a minor industry in the predominantly Muslim province of Lanao del Sur in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao...
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...
...assassination produced a sharp increase in the size and intensity of Communist guerrilla activity by the military organization called the New People's Army. Though the insurgency is concentrated on Mindanao and some other southern islands, it spread after the Aquino assassination to 60 of the country's 74 provinces. In addition, the killing of Aquino created a nationwide crisis of confidence that caused the already stagnant economy to spiral downward, even as most other Southeast Asian nations were prospering. After the assassination, says an American official, "all these concerns took a quantum leap...