OIC probes alleged Army intrusion into MNLF camp

DATU PIANG, Maguindanao — Local leaders are worried of "serious implications" of the investigation the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) will conduct starting today on allegations of "undue military intrusion" into a known camp here of the Moro National Liberation Front last month.

The OIC, which has 54 member-countries, including wealthy Arab petroleum-exporting states, helped broker the Sept. 2, 1996 government-MNLF peace pact.

"We are hoping that the OIC’s fact-finding mission will not be misled with allegations that soldiers destroyed facilities inside the camp during the raid. This is what certain people here are trying to project," a 60-year-old Ustadz said in Maguindanaoan dialect.

The hostilities in the MNLF’s territory here reportedly erupted when members of the front opened fire on soldiers searching for two notorious kidnappers holding out in the area, triggering running gunbattles that exacted casualties on both sides. Another source, who requested anonymity, said they are apprehensive that the intervention of the OIC will only embolden other MNLF groups in the South to unduly use the international forum as a venue for ventilating sentiments against military and police actions against them.

Foreign donors funding various livelihood projects in the MNLF camp here earlier said the agricultural facilities they help put up for former fighters of the front have not been destroyed in the military’s bombardment of the camp.

In a press statement, Fairudz Ebus of the Ecumenical Commission for Displaced Families and Communities (ECDFC), a non-government organization which conducted an on-site verification of the circumstances that led to the hostilities, said they found all the buildings and livelihood facilities in the MNLF camp still intact after the conflict.

Ebus said among those that inspected the site were representatives of the United Nations Development Program and Regional Social Welfare Secretary Bainon Karon of the Autonomous Region Muslim Mindanao

"The facilities as well as the buildings we were requested to see for ourselves during our visit to the area were found to be still existing," Ebus said in a written statement.