Friday, August 08, 2008 Roperos: Peace in Mindanao By Godofredo M. Roperos Politics Also
MY first acquaintance with the Christian-Moro conflict in Mindanao was by the way of tales on Moro raids and piracy in the coastal towns of Cebu. The Moros took all sorts of things, together with young girls and women they kept or sold as slaves. With this, we grew up fearing the “Moros.”
It was in college that my thinking and attitude towards non-Christians in the south changed.
At the University of the Philippines in Diliman, I did not only have Muslims as classmates but also “dorm mates.” I was most surprised to find them no different from the rest of the students in the campus. Their being non-Christians was inconsequential.
But the prob-lem of Muslim Mindanao has gone beyond the level of per-sonal relationship or friendship. It has always been about the broader matter of national concern that dates back to the Spanish and American colonial periods when the two countries tried to consolidate their control over the archipelago. Both failed, of course, and when we gained independence, the Moros resisted integration.
Ironically, the individual Muslim is warm and friendly. He is a very warm and helpful friend, as I can attest with the many Muslim friends I gathered across the years. In fact, I know of many of them who would rather get a Christian lawyer when they have a legal problem than a Muslim legal counsel on the basis of trust and confidence. The reason is often a matter of reliance on capability and competence and trust.
After World War II, when peace should have allowed Filipinos to concentrate on smoothly developing the nation economically, socially, and politically, the decades-old conflict between Christians and Muslims reared its ugly head.
Muslim Filipinos resisted assimilation to the national mainstream, confronting our government with two-pronged political challenges from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front. The two have become symbols of the twin horns of a dilemma blocking our search for peace.
For our people to be consistently missing the life of peace and quiet simply because its leadership continues to fail to secure peace agreements across many decades from certain enclaves of disgruntled citizenry is a definite shame. It is time, indeed, that our current leaders should try to do their best to be able to find the final solution to our long search for a lasting peace in our islands.
