Tension in troubled Cotabato town worsening

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Officials on Saturday took turns appealing for public cooperation in putting a stop to the unending killings in the troubled Pikit town in Cotabato province.

More than 30 people have been killed in one gun attack after another in Pikit in the past 24 months and two men were injured in a grenade blast in its town proper Friday afternoon.

A member of the 80-seat Bangsamoro parliament, the physician Kadil Sinolinding, said Saturday there is an urgent need for cross-section support to the police and military peacekeeping missions in Pikit.

Most of the killings in the Moro-dominated Pikit in recent weeks happened in its barangays that are inside the Special Geographic Area, or SGA, of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Pikit is in Cotabato province under Region 12, but a number of its component-barangays became part BARMM after residents voted in favor of the inclusion of their villages into its core territory during a plebiscite in 2019.

“The regional police offices in Region 12 and in the Bangsamoro region should do `shared law-enforcement operations' in Pikit. I don’t blame the local government unit for these troubles.  Peacekeeping should be a multi-sector initiative, one involving the local communities,” Sinolinding, who has relatives in Pikit, said Saturday.

BARMM’s labor minister, Muslimin Sema, who is chairman of the Moro National Liberation Front, said he will instruct their members in Pikit to help their LGU, the police and the military stop criminalities in the area.

Three Moro women --- Rosana Samama Mabandas, Gihan Mamintal Abdulraman, Nainon Dagadas Gani ---were badly hurt in an ambush in Barangay Gli-Gli in Pikit last Wednesday, two days before a grenade explosion ripped through a welding shop in its town proper that hurt two male residents.

“The police, the military and the LGU of Pikit will not succeed in their common security effort there without public support. We in the MNLF shall help,” Sema said.

Sinolinding said traditional Moro leaders and members of the Islamic religious community also ought to help maintain law and order in Pikit.

Brig. Gen. John Guyguyon, Bangsamoro regional police director, said he is considering possible joint peacekeeping missions in Pikit by their units and the Police Regional Office-12.

A senior police officer said there is a need to establish a coordinating office for law-enforcement operations in the SGA barangays, manned jointly by personnel from the regional police offices in BARMM and in Region 12.

The headquarters of PRO-BAR is in Parang town in Maguindanao del Norte, quite distant from Pikit.

“Our personnel are conscious of territorial coverage. There are barangays in Pikit that are under Region 12 and under BARMM. The regional police offices in both regions and the BARMM regional government can do something about that,” the police officer, who requested anonymity, said.

Major Gen. Roy Galido, commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said Saturday he has ordered the 602nd Infantry Brigade and the 90th Infantry Battalion covering Pikit to maximize support for the law-enforcement activities of the Pikit Municipal Police Station.

“We are here to help too. These are police matters. Even so, we can help restrain criminals from moving around through our checkpoints,” Galido said.