Muslims told: Fight violence

IN A SHOW of cooperation, Moro Islamic Liberation Front ’s 114th Base Command chief Dan Asnawi (in yellow and blue striped shirt) signs a document committing to work with the military, local government and International Monitoring Committee to secure communities liberated from the Abu Sayyaf Group. JULIE ALIPALA/INQUIRER MINDANAO

DATU ABDULLAH SANGKI, Maguindanao—The mayor of this town is rallying Muslim residents to help protect local Christians from attacks by renegade Moro rebels, who killed at least eight people during a Christmas Eve attack on two communities here and in another town, Ampatuan.

Mayor Mariam Sangki-Mangudadatu said the Dec. 24 attacks were “inhuman.”

“We condemn the group that perpetrated this,” said Mangudadatu.

She said in a statement that the town is one of the most peaceful in Maguindanao “where Christians and Muslims live peacefully together.”

Mangudadatu told her Muslim constituents that the attacks were the work of a group with an “antipeace” agenda, adding that the victims, residents of the community of Kakal here and Sabadoan in Ampatuan town, were defenseless.

“Let us stand up for them at all cost,” she said.

Abu Misri Mama, the spokesperson of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), admitted that BIFF guerrillas were behind the attacks and claimed the victims were armed.

Victor Samama, former Maguindanao board member, said the province’s Muslim and Christian residents should look back at the years when they protected each other from harm, instead of being drawn to enmity.

Samama and other leaders made the appeal a day after the attacks which coincided with the reunion of Muslim and Christian alumni of a Catholic school in Datu Piang town, and the commemoration of the birth of the Prophet Mohammad or Maulidin Nabi, falling this year on Dec. 26.

Unlike local Muslims, extremist groups like the BIFF and Abu Sayyaf do not believe in offering food and charity in commemorating the birth of the Prophet Mohammad.

Samama recounted that Notre Dame of Dulawan, the only Catholic school in Maguindanao province, had saved the lives of Muslim and Christian residents not once but several times over in the past and in recent years. Nash B. Maulana, Inquirer Mindanao