Prayer rally for Sabah crisis set in ARMM

COTABATO CITY, Philippines - The rank-and-file personnel of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao will hold a prayer rally at 6:00 p.m. Wednesday to call for a peaceful resolution to the Sabah crisis involving followers of Sulu Sultan Jamalul Kiram III and Malaysian security forces.

The ARMM’s Regional Communications Group said in a news advisory that the event will show how officials of different line agencies and executive offices support peaceful means of resolving the security issues now hounding Sabah, affecting thousands of Filipinos residing in the mineral-rich island state.

“This is just a peaceful prayer gathering, where we will pray for a peaceful end to the security problems there,” said John Magno, chief of staff of the Office of the Regional Governor.

Organizers are expecting dozens of independent peace activists, some of them involved in various projects funded by foreign donors, to attend the prayer rally.

Myrna Jocelyn Henry, a senior member of the ARMM’s ComGroup, said regional governor Mujiv Hataman will join prayer rally.

The ARMM has political and administrative jurisdiction over the island provinces of Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, home to members of Kiram’s self-styled “royal army” now battling Malaysian forces in different areas in Sabah.

The Sulu Sultanate is reasserting control over Sabah, which, from historical accounts, was ceded as a gift to the Sulu royalty in the 16th century by the Sultan of Brunei for having helped quell an uprising that nearly toppled the Bruneian monarch.

Hataman earlier ordered local executives in Tawi-Tawi to help monitor the situation of thousands of Filipinos in Sabah amid reports purporting that many of them have fled the island state to escape from the ensuing hostilities between Malaysian security forces and the Sultan’s royal army.

Merchants in Tawi-Tawi are now complaining of shortage in food supplies owing to the closure of the shipping route linking the provincial capital and island towns to trading ports in Sabah.

About 80 percent of consumer goods sold in the markets of Bongao, capital town of Tawi-Tawi, and surrounding island municipalities come from Sabah, which is inside the Malaysian territory. It is only six hours of boat ride from Tawi-Tawi.

“The effects of the conflict in Sabah are now being felt in parts of ARMM. That is why we need to pray for the speedy peaceful resolution of the strife there,” said local government secretary Makmod Mending, Jr.

Mending has been tasked by Hataman to monitor the security situation in Tawi-Tawi on a round-the-clock basis.