Word: mindanao
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From the rice fields of northern Luzon to the coconut groves of southern Mindanao, anger and rebellion are rising in the Philippines, a country that threatens to become a powder keg in the Pacific region. The resentment is directed primarily at the corruption-tinged, autocratic regime of President Ferdinand Marcos, who seven years ago imposed martial law on the 7,000 islands of the Philippine archipelago. Today he rules as both President and Prime Minister over a dangerously deteriorating society. Despite statistically impressive increases in his country's per capita income, poverty and hunger affect most of the Philippines...
Despite a costly five-year military campaign, an armed rebellion among the Muslim Moros in Mindanao and Sulu has been contained but not suppressed. In other rural regions, the smaller Maoist New Peoples Army is growing in size. Marauding bands of N.P.A. guerrillas frequently harass army patrols and sometimes even occupy isolated villages for several days at a time. Few Filipinos, and even fewer knowledgeable Western observers, are convinced that the country is on the verge of becoming another Iran. But many fear that in the long run the confluence of injustice and bloodshed could threaten the Marcos regime...
...Because it is something which is necessary for our own peculiar situation. We are, right now, trying to liquidate the secessionist movement in Mindanao. While we are in the process, therefore, I believe that the national government should be armed with this power. We've just received hard evidence to indicate a tie-up between the New People's Army with the Moro National Liberation Front [the Muslim separatist movement]. [In addition], the economic crisis came up. Since the economic crisis has dimensions that we cannot actually now determine, I would rather play safe. I may be blamed...
...antitank guns. Their easiest prey is the flotilla of fishing trawlers, ferries and small trading boats that ply the island waters. The booty includes everything from cargoes of fish to duty-free goods being trafficked in a centuries-old barter trade between East Malaysia and the Philippine island of Mindanao. "The greed of the pirates is unbelievable," says a Malaysian official. One ruthless pirate tradition of yore prevails: walking the plank. Of 500 victims attacked by buccaneers off the southern Thai provinces of Trat and Chantaburi last year, more than 300 drowned...
...Last year, serious earthquakes struck Guatemala, killing 22,000; the area surrounding Tientsin in China, with a toll of perhaps 665,000; Mindanao, 8,000; Turkey. 5,000: and northern Italy...