Bansa Moro people resist oppression

This eyewitness account by Sharon Eolis is an excellent expose of the current Philippine situation. The deepening political and economic crisis there has gone unreported in the mainstream U.S. media.

The impact of this crisis on the majority of the 72 million Filipinos is devastating. To understand the crisis, one must know the history of U.S.-Philippine relations.

After the U.S.-Philippine War in 1898, and the defeat of the revolutionary forces and the Filipinos¹ struggle for freedom and self-determination, the Philippines became a U.S. colony. In 1946, the United States granted formal political independence to the Philippines, but the country continued to be tied down by unequal treaties and agreements. Under these circumstances, the Philippines changed from a colony to a neocolony of the United States and an appendage of the world capitalist system. From the first Filipino president, to the current president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Philippine governments have been completely subservient to U.S. imperialism.

The U.S. objective, then and now, has been to crush the struggles for national liberation and the Filipinos' aspirations for sovereignty and true democracy.

The Bansa Moro people have a brilliant history of fighting U.S. imperialism and the puppet Philippine governments. Their heroic resistance against U.S. domination has been met with extreme atrocities. They have been victims of land grabbing, government-encouraged Christian chauvinism, and exploitation of their people and resources by U.S. transnational corporations and other imperialists.

Currently, U.S. Special Forces along with the Philippine armed forces are conducting a war of genocide against the Bansa Moro people in Mindanao.

—Lydia Bayoneta

The International Solidarity Mission had the delegation break into groups to take testimony on human-ights violations in five different provinces. I was on a team that visited a village in which most of the people were Bansa Moro.

The people we were meeting with had been displaced by the war in Mindanao. From Sulu to Basilan, people were forced to leave because of the Philippine Army's military assault on their farms, homes and families.

Most people from this region are Islamic and their roots are in indigenous tribes. For hundreds of years the Spanish colonists couldn't overthrow the established rule of law, trade and Islamic beliefs. But when U.S. imperialism came back in during World War II, it was able to smash the historic order of the people. The people have been unable to regain control of their land since the U.S. invasion. There is an ongoing armed struggle to take back the land and demand autonomy from the Philippines.

Like the Palestinian people who were driven from their land, the Moro people have been driven out and replaced by other Filipino people from other regions who have received government assistance.

There are great natural resource of oil and minerals in the region that U.S. imperialism is hoping to take over.

Visiting Baseco

Our first visit with Bansa Moro people was in a village called Baseco. The village has concrete dwellings for about 6,000 people, but most live in shacks with incomplete siding and leaky roofs. Few have electricity. There is no running water and no bathrooms.

The whole village is located on top of a garbage dump, which is a landfill right off the bay. Big storms are a constant threat.

We visited a family in which the husband works 12 hours a day, seven days a week. The family has six children, one an infant. They don´t have enough money for the clothing that would allow the children to go to school. This family is much better off than most of this village of 80,000 people, who are forced to sift through the piles of garbage in order to find things to sell.

While many of the women and their children were dressed in their best clothing, there were still a lot of very young toddlers who had no clothing or wore just shirts but no pants or shoes. Although we did not see children as badly malnourished as the Iraqi children during the period of U.S.-led sanctions, signs of malnutrition were visible.

There is no health care for women and their children. We saw very few older folks.

The people are on guard to keep the government from demolishing their houses. They are supposed to get several days' notice, but sometimes they just get 30 minutes to clear out their belongings.

The government has a plan to demolish the shacks and build expensive high-rise dwellings on this prime waterfront property.

Conditions in Sabah

The second village, Sabah, was in a wooded area. The buildings were older, but in better shape. This site was partially destroyed by a recent typhoon and flash flood. The water had reached the second floor of some buildings. The damage was still visible.

Part of the village had been evacuated to a location called Harangan Juvil, where a new village with cement houses was erected. We spent the night in that village. These were solid dwellings. It seemed that more people were working in this village.

We were invited to speak to a young woman who was eight months pregnant. Her husband was working in construction in Manila; he stays in the city all week and comes back on the weekends.

With a translator, we learned she was seeing a professional midwife and a lay midwife. She was expecting her third child and had had a sonogram. She was going to have her tubes tied so this would be her last child.

She had one light bulb in her home, which is a luxury. She also had a wooden bed. But most of the buildings only had mats on a cement floor.

We also spoke with two other women, both of whom had lost their husbands because of lack of medical care. The first had a ruptured appendix and the second had meningitis. He was treated in the hospital for about a month until the family ran out of money. Then he was kicked out, to die at home. This made it necessary for the widowed woman to send her children abroad to work in order to pay off the debt and to care of their mother who had no income.

The woman whose husband died of appendicitis had to send her daughter abroad as a domestic worker.

Many Filipino families depend on these earnings to survive.

Next: Conclusion of ISM—an International Peoples Tribunal.