Moros surface vs Bongbong Marcos, recall massacres

AN ACTOR portrays a victim of summary execution during martial law during the staging of the play “Never Again” at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani in Quezon City, which seeks to remind the people of the dark days of the Marcos dictatorship. RAFFY LERM

COTABATO CITY—A group of Moro victims of martial law vowed to campaign against Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s bid to become vice president, a step away from the highest position of the land which his father occupied for more than 20 years through one-man rule.

“Never again to the Marcoses [being] at the helm of power in this country,” said Mambai Edon Sapalon, spokesperson of the Bangsamoro Justice-Seekers for Martial Law Massacre Victims.

Sapalon said Moros, who were victims of massive human rights violations and families of those who were killed in the anti-Moro campaign of the Marcos dictatorship, “strongly expressed their disapproval” of Marcos Jr.’s bid.

Adding insult to injury, Sapalon said, was Marcos Jr.’s refusal to apologize for the abuses committed by his father and Marcos cronies.

“We fiercely deplore (Marcos Jr.’s) guiltless stance,” said Sapalon.

She said cases of Moro women, children and the elderly mercilessly killed by soldiers loyal to the Marcos dictatorship were too many to count.

These included the 1971 so-called Tacub Massacre in Kauswagan, Lanao del Norte, where 140 people were executed and massacres in Alamada, North Cotabato (73 dead), Magsaysay, Lanao del Norte (66 dead), Kisulon, Bukidnon (67 dead), and Buldon, Maguindanao (60 dead).

More than 1,000 Moro people were also killed in Malisbung in Palimbang, Sultan Kudarat in 1973. Over 700 were killed in Patikul, Sulu, in 1977 and more than 2,000 in Pata, Sulu, in 1981, Sapalon said.

She said, like the dead dictator, the younger Marcos also “committed a massacre of his own by butchering the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL).”

The proposed BBL seeks to replace the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) with another autonomous setup with broader powers. It is part of a peace deal between the Aquino administration and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

“Senator Marcos even brazenly announced the death of BBL,” Sapalon said. Marcos, she added, “killed the hopes and dreams of the Moro people.” Edwin O. Fernandez, Inquirer Mindanao