Umra Kato accused of atrocities vs MILF

COTABATO CITY—A renegade Moro rebel leader had committed atrocities against his former comrades in the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in an ongoing feud over land, an official of the MILF said Wednesday.

Khaled Musa, deputy chair of the MILF committee on information, said the atrocities were committed allegedly by Ameril Umra Kato, a former MILF leader, and his men.

During clashes in Datu Piang town in Maguindanao, Musa said, Kato and his men “gouged out the eyes of dead MILF forces, cut off their sex organs, ears and tongue.”

One of Kato’s followers, a certain Abunawas, is fighting for land in Barangay (village) Balanaken in Datu Piang which is also being claimed by an MILF leader identified only as Adzmie.

At least 24 men from both sides have been killed in a series of gunfights in Datu Piang.

Musa said what Kato and his followers did to the fallen MILF fighters during the gunfights was forbidden by Islam. The atrocities, he said, have drawn the attention of the government panel in peace negotiations with the MILF.

Government negotiators, he said, have asked the MILF to investigate the cases against Kato, who formed his own group called Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Movement (BIFM) after he broke off from the MILF. The armed group of the BIFM was given the name Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters.

Musa said Kato wouldn’t have gone berserk had the government honored the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD), which called for an expanded territory for Moro self-rule but which the Supreme Court junked as unconstitutional.

Kato, according to Musa, was a “creation” of what the MILF believed was this act of deception by the government.

Kato started to disobey the MILF after the failed signing of the MOA-AD, said Musa.

“After the government reneged on signing the MOA-AD in 2008, Kato started to criticize the MILF leadership for engaging in endless and useless negotiations,” Musa said in a statement posted on the MILF website.

The MILF central committee is discussing Kato’s case, one of the contentious issues raised by the government panel in the August 22-24 formal peace negotiations in Kuala Lumpur.

Kato has been declared “bughaat” (Arabic for disobedient) by the MILF central committee for his continued defiance and rejection of the MILF central committee’s directives.

The government peace panel has asked the MILF for a time frame when to “settle internally” the issue of Kato. Musa said the MILF will inform the government on Kato’s case through the Malaysian facilitator. Edwin Fernandez, Inquirer Mindanao