Southerners laud Malacañang's amnesty for MILF, MNLF members
COTABATO CITY — Southerners on Monday expressed appreciation to two proclamations of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. granting amnesty to members of two Moro fronts tagged in crimes in pursuit of revolutionary goals.
The president last week issued Proclamation 405 and Proclamation 406 granting amnesty to members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front, respectively, who are facing criminal cases as a consequence of their involvement in bloody secessionist uprisings.
Gerry Salapuddin, administrator of the Southern Philippines Development Authority, said on Monday that the two proclamations “augurs well” with cross-section efforts to foster lasting peace in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Salapuddin, who hails from Tuburan town in BARMM’s Basilan province, was thrice seriously wounded in clashes with soldiers while he was chairman of the MNLF’s revolutionary committee in the island province in the 1970s.
“Armed conflicts are devastating, painful, saddening, sickening. We’ve learned from it that the best way to build peace, based on Mindanao settings, is reconciliation and unity in spreading it everywhere in all of its regions,” Salapuddin said.
At least 300 members of the MILF and the MNLF, mostly residents of BARMM, have pending criminal cases related to rebellion in different courts in Mindanao, according to officials of different peace-advocacy organizations in the region and human rights lawyers helping them for free.
BARMM covers six provinces and three cities where there are government-recognized enclaves of the MILF and the MNLF, whose leaders are now cooperating in overseeing the regional government, either as members of its 80-seat parliament or as heads of various ministries.
BARMM Local Government Minister Naguib Sinarimbo, spokesperson of the regional government, said that they were elated after the president issued the two proclamations that can hasten his peace overtures with the MILF and the MNLF.
“That is a good development, something that can hasten our efforts to make BARMM a truly peaceful and progressive region. We are thankful to the President,” Sinarimbo said.
BARMM’s labor minister, Muslimin Sema, who is chairman of the MNLF’s central committee, said that many of their members had been recklessly sued for crimes “shotgun style” for being guerillas fighting for recognition as native inhabitants of Mindanao and self-rule under Philippine sovereignty.
“We are glad that President Marcos issued Proclamation 405 and 406. To him we are thankful,” Sema said on Monday.
Sema said the two proclamations can catalyze efforts of the MNLF in sustaining the gains of its Sept. 2, 1996 final peace compact with Malacañang.
The MILF has two peace deals with the government — the 2012 Framework Agreement on Bangsamoro and, subsequently, the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro — that paved the way for the creation of BARMM via a plebiscite in 2019, replacing the then already 27-year Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a block of more than 50 Muslim countries, including wealthy petroleum-exporting nations in the Middle East and North Africa, helped broker Malacañang’s separate peace accords with the MNLF and the MILF.
More about amnesty granted to insurgent rebel, group members
The Presidential Communications Office reported that Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin also signed Executive Order (EO) No. 47 which made revisions to Executive Order No. 125 from 2021, establishing the National Amnesty Commission (NAC) last November 22.
Marcos said there is a need to revise and modernize the NAC's functions to cover the amnesty applications process in accordance with the newly-issued proclamations.
The president issued Proclamations 403, 404, 405 and 406 granting amnesty to those who “committed crimes in pursuit of political beliefs,” whether it’s punishable under special penal laws of the Revised Penal Code.
In a statement issued by Marco Valbuena, chief information officer of the Communist Party of the Philippines, he said that "the CPP and all revolutionary forces
under its leadership denounce and reject the Marcos amnesty, and declare their unwavering determination to advance the revolutionary armed struggle to end imperialist domination, tyranny, corruption and oppression under the Marcos regime."
The group called Proclamation 404 a "big sham."
"The sham amnesty of Marcos claims to seek 'peace, unity and reconciliation.' But genuine, just and lasting peace can only be attained by addressing the roots of the civil war—widespread social injustice and the lack of genuine national freedom. However, the Marcos amnesty sham seeks only the pacification of the Filipino people by ewarding those who will betray the people's cause and bow to their exploiters and oppressors," the group said.
"The Marcos amnesty is a big sham which like all previous scams is another milking cow. Hundreds of millions, if not a few billion pesos allotted for unaudited 'community livelihood' programs, line up the pockets of bureaucrats and military officers. To access these large amounts of public funds, military and police forces forcibly enlist civilians as 'surrenderees' or 'former rebels' and claim areas as 'insurgency-free,'" it also said. — With reports from Ian Laqui and Rosette Adel
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