COTABATO CITY (Mindanao Examiner / 05 Feb) – The Moro Islamic Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) accused Monday Philippine soldiers of torturing five Muslim villagers they seized in North Cotabato province, scene of clashes between security and rebel forces.
It said members of the Philippine Army’s reconnaissance unit tortured the five, one of them a mother, into admitting they were MILF rebels. The five, the MILF, said were only farmers who fled last week’s fighting between rebels and troops in Midsayap town.
One of the five, identified only as Harun, was badly beaten that he was rushed to hospital in Cotabato City. And the rest had been mauled by soldiers and that two claimed they were clubbed with a hammer on the head and hands by their interrogator to force them to admit they were terrorists.
The four, Mira Matelendo, 29; and brothers Tho, 24; Bahnarin, 18; and Endong Alim, 16, were searching for food in the village of Kadingilan to bring back to a government refugee shelter nearby when soldiers arrested them.
An MILF cease-fire unit and members of the Malaysia-led international truce monitoring team rescued the four on Sunday; about four hours after soldiers arrested them.
The MILF said many Muslim villagers had been arrested and tortured in North Cotabato after accusing them as members of the rebel group, which is currently negotiating peace with Manila.
“I was frightened to death while we were in the hands of the soldiers. All that was in my mind is my five-month old baby. It also came into my mind that Tho will be killed when the soldiers took him from us and brought him to one place,” Mira said.
The MILF on Monday protested the arrest and torture of the civilians and it will bring the matter to the attention of the government peace panel.
Eid Kabalu, a spokesman for the MILF, said a Muslim preacher was earlier arrested by soldiers in Midsayap town on suspicion that he was a rebel. A Muslim woman, he said, was also shot and wounded by patrolling soldiers near a farm after tagging her as a rebel.
“How can the government win the hearts and minds of Muslims in the southern Philippines when they continue to live under the shadow of constant fear and oppression by soldiers? Where is justice here?” he told the Mindanao Examiner.
Col. Julieto Ando, a spokesman for the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, denied the accusations and branded the reports as propaganda. “They are all lies. It is propaganda. Soldiers are here to protect the civilians against bad elements,” he said in a separate interview.
Last week, rebels and soldiers clashed sporadically for three days in Midsayap town, killing at least 2 people and had forced about 6,000 villagers to flee their homes after government planes, backed by combat helicopters, assaulted suspected MILF strongholds.
Mohager Iqbal, the MILF’s chief peace negotiator, said the fighting erupted after armed militias and Christian landowners tried to drive away local Muslim villagers, some of them members of the MILF. He said the soldiers sided with the militias and attacked rebel forces, sparking sporadic, but fierce clashes since Friday.
The MILF, the country’s largest Muslim rebel group, is fighting for independence the past three decades. It signed a cease-fire with the government in 2001 that paved the way for the peace talks, but despite the truce, sporadic clashes still continue in many areas in the troubled region with both sides accusing each other of violating the fragile accord. (Mindanao Examiner)
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