EDITORIAL - Show commitment to enduring peace

There is only one police force in the country, and law enforcers need not seek clearance from local officials to enter any town or city. This has been emphasized by the leadership of the Philippine National Police following an ambush on Aug. 30 that killed the police chief of Ampatuan town in Maguindanao, Lt. Reynaldo Samson and his aide Cpl. Salipuden Endab, and wounded three other PNP members.

Samson and his men had gone to the Ampatuan village of Kapinpilan to arrest a robbery suspect. The policemen failed to find the suspect and were heading back to their station when they were ambushed. As a firefight erupted, the gunmen fled.

The PNP leadership has sacked the police chief of Maguindanao, Col. Christopher Panapan. PNP chief Gen. Rodolfo Azurin has ordered the filing of criminal charges against six members of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters or BIFF. Azurin has also lamented the apparent reason for the ambush: the arresting team entered Kapinpilan without a heads-up to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Following the peace deal in the previous administration, MILF leaders are now in charge of governance in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, which includes the municipality of Ampatuan. The BARMM is not an independent enclave; it is governed by Philippine laws, and the region is included in the national territory that the PNP and Armed Forces of the Philippines are mandated to secure.

Ampatuan town gained notoriety for a massacre on Nov. 23, 2009. That was when 58 people, 32 of them media workers, were murdered on orders of the Ampatuan clan, in the worst case of election violence in this country. Violence has long been associated with the areas covered by the BARMM. Another massacre in Mamasapano town, also in Maguindanao, saw 44 police Special Action Force commandos who were hunting down top Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli Abdhir, alias Marwan, gunned down by combined teams of the BIFF and MILF in January 2015.

Relatives of the so-called SAF 44 are still waiting for justice. The MILF refused to turn over those responsible for the bloodbath. This time, with MILF leaders in charge of government in the BARMM, the PNP is hoping that those behind the deadly ambush in Ampatuan town will be brought to justice with the help of the MILF. The PNP also wants MILF cooperation in the arrest of other fugitives hiding in the BARMM.

An initial six members of the BIFF led by commanders Boy Jacket and Abdulnasser Guianid have been charged by the PNP. If the MILF can assist in the perpetrators’ arrest and prosecution, it will be a welcome manifestation of sincerity in working for enduring peace in a region that has suffered too long from armed violence.