Al Haj Ebrahim Murad, Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF)
chief, has appealed to the media in particular to refrain from calling the
decommissioning of the MILF’s weapons and fighters as “surrender.”
“To allay the mistaken notion of some members of our society
and the gross misreading of information that some elements of the media seem to
be invariably predisposed to, the event Tuesday is not a process of
‘surrender’,” Murad said.
The MILF has turned in on Tuesday 75 high-powered firearms
to the International Decommissioning Body (IDB) and initially decommissioned
145 Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces (BIAF) members.
President Benigno Simeon Aquino III witnessed the historic
ceremony where BIAF submitted themselves to the IDB to qualify to join the first
batch of MILF members who have given up armed fighting and instead avail of
socio-economic alternatives to rebuild their lives and communities.
The initial decommissioning is one of the components of the
normalization annex which is one of the four annexes in the Comprehensive
Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB).
The agreement was reached last year by the GPH and MILF
peace negotiators after 17 years of talks in Malaysia with plenty of support
from the international community, including laying the rebuilding the lives of
the 40-year war’s victims, implementation of a well-observed ceasefire,
establishing institutions that have since started implementing Bangsamoro
socio-economic development projects.
The decommissioning will be made in three incremental phases
after the ceremonial turnover on Tuesday--30 percent more of the MILF weapons
will be turn in when the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) is enacted into
law.
Another 35 percent MILF weapons will be turned in the BBL is
ratified and the Bangsamoro police force is formed, and the final 35 percent is
when the GPH and MILF peace panels shall have signed the exit memorandum that
will signal the full fulfillment of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro
(CAB).
The MILF has an estimated standing force of 10,000 armed
fighters based on several camps mostly in central Mindanao .
These camps will also be disbanded under the normalization plan.
http://www.pna.gov.ph/index.php?idn=2&sid=&nid=2&rid=773327
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