MANILA, Philippines -- Instead of going after the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) on their own, members of the “Ilaga” (rats in Visayan) vigilante group should apply to become armed police auxiliaries, Philippine National Police (PNP) Director General Avelino Razon Jr. said Thursday.
Razon’s invitation to the resurgent vigilante group, which was organized by Visayan migrants to Mindanao and earned notoriety in the early 1970s for its savagery in the campaign against the Moro National Liberation Front, which surfaced this week as trhe “Reformed Ilaga Movement” and threatened to execute 10 MILF members for every civilian the rebels killed.
"It will be better if they constitute themselves as [a] police auxiliary and [place themselves] under the control of PNP," Razon told INQUIRER.net in a phone interview Thursday.
Under the police auxiliary scheme, unveiled earlier by Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno, the PNP will arm civilian volunteers with shotguns to defend their communities against MILF attacks.
The plan eventually calls for arming up to 12,000 volunteers nationwide.
Razon said the Ilaga, who were photographed at a press conference armed with assault rifles, carbines and other weapons, must not arm themselves.
"They cannot take law into their hands. We say no to vigilantism. We will not allow the indiscriminate arming of civilians,” Razon stressed even as he said the reemergence of the Ilaga did not alarm him.
Razon said Ilaga members who decide to become police auxiliaries will be properly screened and trained.
"We will have to check their previous records and we want all firearms to be properly documented. They must conform to all our processes,” he said.
The Ilaga resurgence comes amid continued fighting between government forces and MILF guerrillas accused of occupying several North Cotabato villages and attacking five Lanao del Norte towns earlier this month.
The hostilities followed the issuance by the Supreme Court of a temporary restraining order against the signing of a memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain between government and the MILF.
