Wednesday 13 August 2008

By Catholic News Service

Archbishop Orlando Quevedo of Cotabato, Philippines, has urged government and Moro Islamic Liberation Front peace negotiators to stop the fighting that has displaced thousands of villagers in the southern Philippines.

The archbishop sent a text message with the plea to negotiators on both sides 12 August, reported the Asian church news agency UCA News.

The British news agency Reuters reported that Muslim separatists were pulling out of Catholic farmlands 12 August after a two-day military assault on their positions forced nearly 160,000 people to flee from eight towns on the island of Mindanao.

"Our forces on the ground are withdrawing from the conflict areas so we expect fighting to end by tomorrow (Wednesday)," Eid Kabalu, a spokesman for the Islamic front told Reuters. "We expect the situation to normalize."

Archbishop Quevedo told UCA News he sent his text messages to both negotiating panels because it was "the fastest way possible."

He declined to name his contacts on the panels, but told UCA News the text said, "In the name of our one merciful and beneficent God, for the sake of peace, and on behalf of the thousands upon thousands of Muslim, Christian and lumad (indigenous people) evacuees, with little food to eat, I urgently appeal to" the government and Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

He asked the rebels "to return to their original camps" and the government to "cease firing so that the Moro forces can return in peace." He urged negotiators to let the evacuees "return to the peace of their homes."

The Moro rebels have been fighting since the 1970s for an Islamic state in their traditional areas, mostly on Mindanao Island in the southern Philippines.

The day before Archbishop Quevedo's appeal, amid the reverberating sound of gunfire, about 20 children in Pikit's Takepan Elementary School cried in chorus as mothers shouted in Cebuano, the local language, "Get on the floor! Pray! Don't shout!" They were among 80 people seeking refuge in the school.

Outside, Bantay Ceasefire, a volunteer group of Christians, Muslims and indigenous people monitoring the on-again, off-again government-rebel cease-fire in effect since 2003, herded other evacuees across a national highway toward a basketball court to seek cover behind a concrete wall while the armies exchanged fire.

Rexall Kaalim, the group's coordinator, phoned Immaculate Conception Parish and the local government asking for help, saying the school was unsafe because of the clashing forces nearby.

Oblate Father Eduardo Vasquez of Immaculate Conception arrived before noon with two Pikit municipality trucks to transport the evacuees to the parish gym.

The parish hosted some early evacuees and promised to accommodate others whom the town welfare and development office would not serve, he said.

[CNS]