Dear Friends,

I am sending an article written by my colleague Romy Elusfa from Datu Piang,

Maguindanao. Please help us circulate the story. We badly need your help in these times
of humanitarian crisis in Datu Piang.

For Mindanao,

Rick R. Flores/Communications Officer/MPC

0910-310-9178.

ROMY ELUSFA

DATU PIANG, Maguindanao—As the situation of evacuees in refugee camps here

continue to worsen with people starving and dying, another wave of over 200 families
fled their homes on May 31, adding to the 6,277 evacuee-families reported last week.
The over 200 families fled Barangay Reyna Rehente of this town to seek refuge under the
trees in the village of Macasendig in neighboring town of Midsayap in North Cotabato.

Fr. Eduardo Vasquez, OMI, parish priest here, and his over 30 youth volunteers under the
OMI Disaster Response Team, immediately distributed relief goods and plastic laminated
sacks for the shanties that the evacuees built under a woody area in Macasendig.

Fr. Vasquez said that the evacuation was triggered by an encounter between government
militias and Moro guerrillas of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the burning of
houses of civilians on May 31.

Noraida Musa, an evacuee who joined the queue for rice rations, said vernacular that
“there are more than 100 houses of civilians burned” by armed men. Asked who the
armed men were, she said: “Cafgus (Citizens Armed Forces Geographical Unit) and
CVOs (Civilian Volunteer Organization), both are government militias.

Yul Olaya, coordinator of the Bantay Ceasefire, a community-based grassroots

organization actively monitoring the implementation of the ceasefire agreement between
the government and the MILF, said his group was able to count 92 houses burned.
This developed after evacuees in Nunangan village in the neighbor town of Talayan, also
in Maguindanao, filed at the Commission on Human Rights in Region 12 “destructive
arson” cases against soldiers they alleged were behind the torching of some 150 houses
located at the public market of the community last May 7.

In their sworn statements, the complainants alleged that the solider ordered them
(civilians) to vacant the community before the torching of their dwellings.
Meanwhile, the Mindanao Peoples Caucus (MPC), a tri-people organization actively
campaigning for peace advocacy in Mindanao, denounced the Army for the burning of
houses of civilians.
In a statement, the MPC titled “Stop the Food Blockade,” the MPC said: “Nearly a year
since military operations were launched against two field commanders of the Moro
Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the commanders are still on the loose and the civilians
are suffering the brunt of war: children, pregnant women, teachers, students, the civilian
population in Maguindanao”

The government, since August last year, has been running after so-called “lawless MILF”
Commanders Ameril Umbra Kato is Abdulrahman Macapaar, alias Commander Bravo,
and one Commander Mercury who are both operating in two Lanao provinces, and,
Wahid Tundok, also in Maguindanao.

“For more than ten months now, these internally displaced persons (IDPs) -- the
evacuees or “bakwits” as they have come to be known – are still in cramped evacuation
centers and government buildings and schoolhouses, waiting for the time when they can
return to their homes and resume their interrupted lives,” the MPC statement said.

Fr. Vasquez said that his sources from the military already advised him to “be prepared”
because the war may escalate “since this (war) already has the blessings of the higher
ups. They told me we can no longer stop this, Father because the order came from up
there.”

The MPC statement said “the war has instead become so vicious and soldiers who are
supposed to be running against renegade MILF commanders for allegedly attacking
civilians are now committing the very same atrocities that renegade commanders
allegedly perpetuate.”

At a coordination meeting of humanitarian agencies and representatives of the evacuees

in Cotabato City last Thursday, it was reported that the military has blocked a truck-load
of rice intended for the evacuees last May 27. On May 5, 11 truckloads of relief goods of
the International Committee on the Red Cross were also blocked at a military checkpoint.

“The military refuses to acknowledge it is food blockade. But it is food blockade,

nonetheless, when food intended for evacuees are held at checkpoints, the MPC statement
said as it condemned “this practice of blocking humanitarian assistance to the evacuees”
emphasizing that “justice delayed is justice denied, food delayed is food denied as well.
And food denied could, as we all know, help save starving bakwits from preventable
deaths.”

The MPC statement also called on civil society and church organizations, including
international humanitarian agencies, “to stand up and assert the independence of relief
assistance as a matter of right for the IDPs. Our silence on this regard can be construed
as our acquiescence to military's control of relief supplies to promote their military
objective.”
It was earlier reported that of the 50,333 families of displaced persons in Maguindanao,
only 15,522 were provided relief assistance.

MPC called on the Commission of Human Rights to investigate the alleged military
atrocities and “bring those responsible for the attacks to justice.”