Abu Misry Mama, a spokesman for the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Movement-Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, during a clandestine interview with journalists in southern Philippinnes.
Islamic freedom fighters captured a military base used by pro-government militias in a raid on Wednesday in North Cotabato province in southern Philippines, a rebel spokesman said.
The raid came after the military claimed victory over the rebels, who are fighting for an independent Muslim state in the country’s restive south.
Abu Misry Mama, a spokesman for the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Movement (BIFM), said militias fled the base in the town of Pigkawayan. “We overran the military base used by the government militias in the town. The militias fled during the raid,” he told the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.
Mama said they would continue to fight the military that he claimed was behind a recent roadside bombing that nearly hit a convoy of army and media vehicles in the southern province of Maguindanao where security forces are battling the BIFM and its armed wing Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters blamed by the government as behind the spate of attacks and terrorism in the restive region.
Propaganda war
He said the bombing near Rajah Buayan town was the handiwork of the military as part of its propaganda to justify government offensive in Mindanao and to draw support to the peace talks between the Aquino administration and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
“The BIFF has nothing to do with the roadside bombing. It is the military which was behind the bombing and then blame us for the attack,” Mama told The Manila Times.
The 6th Infantry Division said the powerful blast nearly hit two armoured vehicles escorting a truckload of soldiers. There were no reports of casualties or injuries in the blast, but the army quickly blamed the BIFF and their sympathizers for the bombing.
Filipino journalists, who were tailing the military convoy, witnessed the powerful explosion and said they saw a black smoke billowing from the roadside just several blocks away from one of the two armoured personnel carriers escorting the troops.
“It was really powerful and from where we were, we can see a thick black smoke covered the whole highway and we are just lucky that we were behind - about 100 meters - from the military convoy,” said Mark Navales, regional chief of the Mindanao Examiner newspaper, who was with other television journalists covering the fighting in Maguindanao.
Just recently, a roadside bombing had wounded 12 people, including a pair of television journalists, tailing a military convoy in Maguindanao’s Datu Odin Sinsuat town. Among the injured were six soldiers and four other civilians hit by shrapnel from the blast along the town’s highway.
The journalists, Jeff Caparas and his cameraman Adrian Bulatao, both from ABC 5 television, were in a separate vehicle when the bomb explosion occurred. The bomb was reportedly planted in a parked tricycle in the village of Lower Salbu and exploded as the convoy passed.
The military also blamed the bombing to the BIFF - under former MILF rebel leader, Ustadz Ameril Umra Kato - which has been fighting security forces since January 27, a day after Filipino peace negotiators signed an accord with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front on how the country’s rebel group would lay down their weapons.
The 6th Infantry Division now said it had killed over 50 rebels and captured several enemy encampments, but Mama strongly denied the military’s claim and also branded them as propaganda, although he admitted that 7 members of his group were wounded in the clashes that already displaced thousands of families in the province.
Mama also denied the military reports. “We have no casualties in the fighting and the military reports are just propaganda. They cannot even produce a single dead body of our casualties and not even produced a captured freedom fighter,” he said.
The military has recently ended its campaign against the BIFF and declared victory over the rebel group, but intelligence reports said the rebels may be gearing up for urban warfare.
Manila said troops are ready to address the threats posed by the BIFF.
“Sa lahat na pagkakataon, tungkulin ng pamahalaan na tiyakin ang kaligtasan ng mamamayan sa kanayunan o kalungsuran (At all times, the government has a sworn duty to ensure the safety of Filipinos, whether in the rural or urban areas),” a government spokesman, Sec. Herminio Coloma said, adding the police and military continue to keep tabs on the movements of the BIFF.
“The government cannot tolerate threats to national and local security and the lives and security of our people,” he said.
Kato
Kato broke away with the MILF in 2011 after accusing its chieftain Murad Ebrahim for abandoning their struggle for independence and betraying the MILF when he agreed to a secret meeting called by President Benigno Aquino in Japan in August 2011, saying Ebrahim corrupted the rights of the Bangsamoro people, adding the MILF chieftain should have consulted his leaders before meeting with the Filipino leader.
Kato and another senior rebel leader, Abdulla Macapaar, were both accused by Philippine authorities as behind the series of deadly attacks in Mindanao in 2008 after peace negotiators failed to sign a Muslim homeland deal because the Supreme Court declared the accord unconstitutional.
Kato suffered a stroke in 2011, but his condition remains unknown, although there were reports that a new commander – Sheik Mohidin Animbang – has taken over the command of the BIFF, whose members were mostly former fighters of the MILF and rival group Moro National Liberation Front.
The latest military campaign have forced thousands of families to fled their homes and many of the refugees said they have no food or did not get any assistance from the government.
Appeal for aid
The Mindanao Human Rights Action Center (MinHRAC), which is in the forefront of humanitarian operations in the Maguindanao, also appealed to the government and various organizations to help those displaced by the military offensive.
“MinHRAC doesn't have resources. We don't have rice or shelters to give out to the IDPs (internally displaced persons). What we do have is our camera and our notebooks and our computers together with the willingness to face certain levels of risk just to be able to reach hapless civilians. We hope that by sharing the images of and stories from the IDPs, those agencies - governmental, United Nations or other foreign aid agencies, local NGOs (non-governmental organizations) who get funding from donors - with rice and other resources will actually act upon the information we share and provide desperately needed assistance to the IDPs.”
“Those who work for these agencies may now be comfortable in their air conditioned offices in the city. It might be good for them to step out of the comforts of their offices and spend a couple of hours being with the IDPs so that they can experience the hardship of being displaced. This is a simple and humble appeal to those with the resources and mandates to attend to their fellow Bangsamoros,” it said.
And the capture by the military of the alleged BIFF base in Maguindanao province. (Mindanao Examiner Photo - Mark Navales)
http://mindanaoexaminer.blogspot.com/2014/02/islamic-freedom-fighters-capture.html
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