This Week’s Milestones: Sept. 23-29, 2018

Sept. 27, 1973

The islands comprising the Tawi-Tawi group were separated from the territorial jurisdiction of Sulu province to create a new province, called Tawi-Tawi, through Presidential Decree No. 302 signed by then President Ferdinand Marcos.

According to the decree, the islands of Tawi-Tawi were too far from the seat of the provincial government in Sulu, making it difficult and inefficient to deliver services and implement programs.

The province is composed of 10 towns, with Bongao as capital.

According to the 2015 data of the Philippine Statistics Authority, Tawi-Tawi had a poverty incidence of 12.6 percent and its population was 390,715.

Sept. 28, 1901

Hundreds of native fighters armed with bolos staged an attack on American troops stationed in the town of Balangiga in Eastern Samar.

The Filipinos fought to resist the confiscation and rationing of their food stocks and to demand the freedom of about 80 men who were detained and forced to work.

Troops belonging to Company C, 9th US Infantry Regiment, were assigned to Balangiga to keep its port closed to trading and deprive the revolutionaries of supplies during the war.

The ringing of the bells at the church belfry signaled the attack described as the “worst single defeat” suffered by the Americans in the Philippines.

A day later, US reinforcement troops killed residents and turned the town into a “howling wilderness.” This became known as the Balangiga Massacre.

The Americans later took the Balangiga bells as war booty. Since the time of President Fidel Ramos in the 1990s, the Philippine government has been asking Washington to return the bells.

Two of the three bells are displayed at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming, while the other bell is at Camp Red Cloud in South Korea.

Compiled by Kathleen de Villa, Inquirer Research