When the bombs fall, it’s the evacuees who suffer

MAMASAPANO, Maguindanao – From the crowd of evacuees, a young man stepped forward, carrying his seven-year-old sister Farida (not her real name). The timid first grader avoided the stares from visiting reporters and kept silent, but the cast enclosing her entire left leg was enough to tell her harrowing ordeal. According to Farida’s uncle, Badrodin Kajar, the family was deep in their sleep on the night of June 15 when a loud explosion ripped through the air at their evacuation site in Mamasapano town. Farida's mother got up to find her daughter’s leg covered in blood. Mortar bombs had fallen on a nearby house and shrapnel went flying in all directions. One of the bombs wounded Farida. "Lumabas nga buto niyan sa hita. Hanggang ngayon hindi pa magaling kaya hindi pa siya makapasok," (The bones on her thighs came out and her wounds have yet to heal, so until now, she still can’t go to school) Badrodin told GMANews.TV. Nearly a year after the evacuation crisis in southern Mindanao began, the tragedy of displaced villagers remains largely unseen in the public eye. Even inside the evacuation camps, they are not safe from the war that has killed hundreds of people. The large-scale displacement – estimated to have peaked at 600,000 people – started in August last year, shortly after the scrapping of the ancestral domain pact between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the government. This led to the collapse of peace talks and later, the attack of a rogue faction of the rebel group. Since then, the MILF and the government have not returned to the negotiating table. The Kajars are one of the 486 families holed up at the Mahad Libutan Al-Islamie School, one of the most remote evacuation sites in the province. It is just one of more than 500 camps in central and northern Mindanao that had been "activated" since August 2008 to give refuge to evacuees trying to escape the protracted fighting between government forces and MILF rebels. When a media group that included this reporter visited the school last week, it was the first time that the evacuees were able to narrate their experiences to journalists. Located more than two kilometers from the highway, the evacuation site can only be reached through a narrow road riddled with huge craters. Small vehicles are unable to negotiate the route. The group of some 50 journalists from Manila and Mindanao had to board two trucks that sloshed through the puddles and muddied roads. The shelling in Libutan last month was only the latest episode in the armed conflict that has victimized ordinary citizens. No one has claimed responsibility for the mortars that hit Libutan, but pieces of shrapnel recovered from the impact site show that the explosion came from a 105 mm howitzer, according to religious leader Abdulazis Sinalimbo. The evacuees recalled that the explosions were almost non-stop. The Bangsamoro Center for Just Peace, a group monitoring the plight of evacuees in the region, quoted residents as saying that a total of 70 rounds of mortar shelling were heard in just one hour. Bayan Tunadji, 25, was one of those hit by shrapnel during the shelling. The incident inflicted not only physical wounds but also psychological fear. “Kapag may naririnig siya na bazooka, sumasakit iyong sugat niya (His wound becomes painful every time he hears explosions)," recounted Tunadji’s friend Saptula Jimba. Sinalimbo said frequent mortar shelling in the area had taken its toll on residents. The community leader claimed that elderly people have suffered from cardiac arrest and literally “dropped dead" after getting jolted by loud explosions. His claim could not be independently verified. However, in its latest report dated May 17, the National Disaster Coordinating Council confirmed that the fighting in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, Central Mindanao, and Northern Mindanao regions has claimed the lives of 312 people since August 2008. A total of 107 victims have died in military and rebel encounters, while the rest died in evacuation centers due to sickness. The figure does not yet include the five people killed over the weekend when a bomb exploded near a cathedral in Cotabato City. Mobile group Some 7,000 families from five villages in Maguindanao were forced to resettle in Libutan after fighting erupted between the military and suspected rebels last year, said Sinalimbo. The Department of Social Welfare and Development gave a lower figure, saying its latest census in June showed only 4,368 families of evacuees living in Libutan. Julie Villadolid, information officer of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) Health department, attributed the discrepancy in the figures to two factors. First, she said the evacuees are considered “a mobile group" as they move from one village to another, making the tracking of their population difficult. Secondly, some evacuees may have been unable to register when the DSWD conducted the census. The ARMM health office works with the DSWD in looking after the evacuees. Alleged rebel occupation of the provinces of North Cotabato, Lanao del Norte, and Sarangani by the MILF’s 105th Base Command in August 2008 forced a record number of residents to flee their homes and resettle to safer grounds. The military later claimed to have driven the rebels away from the occupied villages, but when the evacuees returned, they got the surprise of their lives. “Sinunog nila ang mga bahay namin at kinatay ang mga alaga namin [They torched our houses and butchered our animals]," evacuee Jimba told GMANews.TV. They blamed the military for the destruction. “Sila lang naman ang papunta-punta doon [They were the only ones who frequented our villages]," said Jimba, who left his farm in one of the settlements near Libutan. The military has maintained that rogue elements of the MILF – and not soldiers – were responsible for the destruction. Since last year, the military has been visiting Libutan every so often, supposedly to “protect people from possible retaliation from enemy MILF rebels," said community leader Sinalimbo. “The military is doing everything to ensure the safety of the (evacuees). We even have stricter inspection at checkpoints due to recent roadside bombings. Mahirap bumalik doon kasi hindi natin masabi kung aatake uli ang MILF," (It’s difficult to go back there because we cannot say when the MILF will attack again) said Col. Jonathan Ponce, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division. The government said more than 200,000 evacuees still remain trapped in aid camps in the region to this day. Longing for home Meanwhile, evacuees in neighboring Datu Piang town are not faring well either. They have turned the Gumbay Elementary School in Gumbay village into a mini-settlement. According to DSWD, Datu Piang is home to 4,795 displaced families. To maximize every inch of space, the evacuees erected tents in every corner of the school grounds and even transformed the open space below the classrooms into living quarters. “Wala pang information kung kailan kami makakabalik sa dati naming tirahan," (We don’t know when we can go back to our houses) said Bela Takemba, who has made a home for her eight children under one of the classrooms for the past 10 months. They have gotten used to the stomping of children’s feet above them whenever “special" classes are held there. Instead of weekdays, children of evacuees attend weekend classes, when officials from the regional Education department are available to teach them. Evacuees at the Gumbay Elementary School have been staying at the camp for so long that they have virtually created a small community of makeshift shanties and humble sari-sari stores inside the school premises. However, Takemba still expressed her desire to leave the evacuation site. If the evacuees had their way, they would prefer to return to their settlements and resume their normal activities of tending to their farmlands and animals. But the intermittent clashes between government and rebel forces have created a culture of “fear and danger" that prevents the evacuees from going home. Unable to return to their abandoned homes and farms, thousands of evacuees remain trapped in Libutan, Gumbay, and other evacuation camps, where they are forced to endure harsh living conditions. They subsist on bananas and spend their nights cramped inside small houses made of dried tree branches and tarpaulin. Forty-five-year-old evacuee Basir Mustapa said the 25-kilogram sack of rice delivered to them by humanitarian groups every so often does little to help his family. “Ayaw na namin dito dahil walang trabaho dito [We don’t want to stay here anymore because we don’t have work here]," Mustapa said. - GMANews.TV