The Philippines, an archipelagic country located in the western Pacific Ocean, has a population of 90 million people. The population of Muslims is about 12 million. Between the years 1450 and 1515, two Islamic principalities were founded on the islands of Sulu and Mindanao. Islam came to the Philippines in the 13th century 200 years before Christianity did.
The Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) have been holding talks for nearly 12 years to find a political formula to end conflict that has killed 120,000 people and displaced 2 million.
The Muslim group’s chief negotiator, Mohagher Iqbal, said the MILF had planned to introduce an option to secede in its proposed agreement with the Philippines, modelled on the peace deal in southern Sudan.
“The Malaysians twisted our arm into dropping that clause, threatening to abandon the peace talks,” Iqbal told members of the Makati Business Club, a powerful lobby group with links to President Benigno Aquino, during a dialogue in Manila.
“Clearly, we are not seeking an independent state, but something that the Moros can effectively govern themselves with little interference from the central government.”
Iqbal said the group had shown its peace formula to the government during talks in Kuala Lumpur in February and expected the see the government’s counter draft in another round of negotiations late next month in Malaysia.
“There’s nothing in our draft that will show we are seeking independence,” Iqbal said.
The MILF’s five-member peace panel has been meeting in Manila with leaders of the business community, civil society, religious institutions, academia and foreign missions to explain the peace formula.
After four decades of armed conflict between the Filipino state and the Moro Muslims, the two parties agreed to sign an ancestral land deal that would end the conflict in 2008. However, the supreme court of the Philippine declared the agreement illegal which caused the conflict to resume. The biggest new internal displacement of people was in Muslim region in Philippine, where 600,000 fled fighting with government and MILF in Muslim region, a United Nations-backed report said.
Source: Agencies