The Peacemakers: Christians turn Moro rebels’ kids into peaceniks

(Last of a series)

COTABATO CITY, Philippines—In a tough slum neighborhood at the edge of the Rio Grande de Mindanao, Christians are teaching the children of former Moro rebels how to get rid of the “culture of war.”

Urban legends abound that feed this outlook in the region that has resisted centuries-old foreign and domestic intrusions from Manila.

The Colt 45 pistol was purportedly designed to comply with US Army requirements during the campaign against the Moros in the early years of the American colonial rule in the Philippines.

Resistance to a firearms collection campaign by then President Ferdinand Marcos following his declaration of martial law in 1972 erupted into a full-blown rebellion in the country’s southern frontier, allegedly because Moros love their guns more than their wives.

Feuding between clans— called rido—over a range of issues from petty slights to a question of honor has cast an often deadly spell of Shakespearean tragedy on the poverty-stricken region.

And then there is the violence inflicted by the forces of nature—the earthquakes, the flooding brought by slight rain and now fierce storms driven by climate change.

The first victims of violence and vendettas are children, according to teachers at J. Marquez Elementary School of Peace.

In 2006, the authorities in the school at Barangay Mother Poblacion decided to include in their academic syllabus practical lessons to help children deal with these problems.

Currently enrolled in the school are 1,760 sons and daughters of rebel returnees who mainly reside in the barangay with a population of over 21,000. All the pupils are Muslim, except for the 11 children of the Christian teachers in the 45-strong faculty.

Pilot project

The barangay is known as the entry and exit point to the city of insurgent groups and criminal gangs coming from the Rio Grande. “This is where you see the good, the bad and the ugly,” said Johnny Balawag of the Department of Education. The latter characters outnumber the good.

It is pretty much like Rio Hondo in Zamboanga City, a Christian enclave that the Army razed during a 10-day standoff with Moro rebels in September 2013. Tens of thousands of internally displaced persons, or IDPs, in the lexicon of UN protocols, are in squalid evacuation centers in Zamboanga. International humanitarian organizations help provide assistance to IDPs, whose continuing presence in the encampments are regarded as an embarrassment and a blot on the record of the government that claims to be progressive.

Described as a “pilot project,” the peace program at the Cotabato school took off after the teachers attended a series of seminars sponsored by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in 2006.

“The idea is to dismantle the culture of war,” said Mergie Benedicto, 42, the school principal, a Seventh Day Adventist with a degree in elementary education from Notre Dame University in Cotabato.

Eye-opener

The UNDP initiative was an “eye-opener,” said teacher Apolonia Ponce Usman, 51. “It shone a light on the issue. That’s where we understood the voice of the youth. Slowly, we embraced this and learned how we can move them away from this culture of violence.”

In practical terms, it means telling kids to shun toy guns and avoid spats that often draw parents to shouting matches and at times to a tragic rido. Soldiers are invited to help parents clean up the premises at the start of the school year and exchange seeds for toy guns. The idea is to let the pupils know that soldiers are not enemies that their rebel parents talk about at home.

It’s not only getting rid of war freaks that preoccupies the teachers, it’s also preparing the children to deal with the perennial flooding that bedevils the barangay with the periodic swelling of Rio Grande during the monsoon season.

Climate change

Living in harmony with the earth in the era of climate change may be a subject that sounds arcane, but the teachers are doing a great job of illustrating this with concrete examples: planting trees, avoiding using plastic and aerosols, and promoting cleanliness.

That’s what kindergarten children in Japan are being taught—segregating garbage, conserving water, cleaning classrooms—elementary lessons in civics that drive home the virtue of discipline in one of the world’s leading economic powerhouses.

In 2013, UN Children’s Fund (Unicef), in partnership with the charity group Community and Family Services International, began a program not only to encourage children in five school communities, including Mother Poblacion, to increase elementary school attendance and completion but also implement disaster risk reduction programs to mitigate the effects of flooding and storms, as well as civil conflicts.

Even in Cotabato City, 75 percent of the total land area is marshy. Children have to go through rivers and marshes to get to their schools. Because it is below sea level, a slight rain triggers flooding, preventing tiny grade school pupils to attend classes.

There are periodic civil conflicts as well, prompting mass movements and evacuations.

Low attendance

The city has the lowest elementary school attendance in Central Mindanao—48.37 percent of around 3,000 children of school age, according to Concepcion Ferrer-Balawag, the education department’s assistant district superintendent.

“The cohort rate is 79.25 percent,” she said. “This means that of 100 students who entered elementary school, 79.25 percent completed the course.”

The department is still trying to track down the large number of out-of-school children in the city.

“These are displaced children 10 to 15 years ago. They still are not living normal lives because of armed conflicts,” Balawag said.

“They were not educated, many only up to Grade 3. When they reached the age of puberty, they got married. The result is poverty and injustice. They are deprived of basic normal services. Because of the war, there is little development, particularly in Mindanao.”

She said because the government could not rise to the challenge, the department was partnering with nongovernment and international organizations to try and meet the requirements of educating the young. “We have limited resources,” she said.

Best solution

“Education is the best solution to the Muslim problem,” said Balawag. “The reason why poverty and conflict have persisted this long is the lack of basic services. There is supposed to be one elementary school and one high school in every barangay. This is not the case.”

There’s also a need to educate the non-Muslims, said the 54-year-old, a Catholic from Pangasinan province who married a Muslim, embraced her husband’s religion and studied Islam.

“Religion has nothing to do with the Muslim problem. For me, this is the true religion,” said Balawag.

“It is difficult to gain the acceptance of non-Muslims,” she said. “It is necessary to learn about the history of Bangsamoro because it is the history of the Filipino people.”

Empathy

Muslims are associated with insurgent Moro forces, she said, even if they are not.

“There is a need to develop empathy. This means you have to immerse yourself in the environment of others. There is a need to give space, to hear the yearnings of the Bangsamoro,” she said. “Let us not think that the Bangsamoro people are fond of their guns. That is the root of the problem.”

In Cotabato and elsewhere in Central Mindanao, the apprehension now is the possible collapse of the peace process that the Aquino administration launched after he took office to resolve the simmering Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) insurgency in the Mindanao-Sulu region.

The slaughter of 44 police commandos on Jan. 25 in Mamasapano outside Cotabato City is threatening to derail the passage of a law calling for the establishment of a Bangsamoro substate.

First victims

An Army campaign against a renegade faction of the MILF involved in the massacre has displaced tens of thousands of residents in a dozen municipalities in Maguindanao province and shut down 20 schools that had been turned into evacuation centers.

“People who talk about all-out war do not know what they are talking about. The children are going to be the first victims,” said Nasser A. Usman, the 58-year-old barangay captain at Mother Poblacion, who is not a relative of the teacher.

Usman was a high school student when he joined the Moro rebels after the declaration of martial law in 1972. “We were all young Muslims attracted by calls for jihad.”

He spent the ensuing years with criminal gangs involved in kidnappings, robbery and assassinations, until he took at heart his father’s counsel. He then did honest work—as pedicab driver, boatman, duck farmer, messenger and later chief security officer before getting elected barangay councilman in 2002.

Since 2006, he has been barangay chief of Mother Poblacion, taking care of security in the tough neighborhood. He drives a Honda sedan, has a gun tucked in his belt and moves around with bodyguards.

“We need to look for ways to avoid war,” said Usman, eyeing the schoolchildren putting on a show for embarrassed visitors from Manila—Inquirer photographer Raffy Lerma and his sidekick.

A great place to live

The children, many of them girls wearing head scarves, were enthusiastically singing a song composed by their teachers in memory of an Irish missionary assassinated while on assignment in Mindanao:

It’s time to rise and be proud

And make this land

Great once again

Let the past be buried

In our hearts

And face the future with great strength

Muslims and Christians

Work hand in hand

Making this land

A great place to live

In justice, equality, security and harmony

As means of peace in Mindanao

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