Please don’t use controversial terms, MILF asks media

MANILA, Philippines — The Moro Islamic Liberaion Front (MILF) on Tuesday appealed to media outfits not to use terms that are controversial or not pursued or advocated by the group. In a statement posted on the group’s official website (www.luwaran.com), MILF secretariat chairman Muhammad Ameen said such terms like "secessionist MILF," "establishing an Islamic state," and "sellout of Mindanao" not only deepen the disunity among peoples in Mindanao but also do an injustice to the MILF and to good scholarship. “Please be objective and fair," Ameen urged members of the media, which he blamed for contributing to the hysteric reaction and opposition to the signing of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) in Malaysia last August 5. He said that in talks with the Philippine government, the issue of independence was not raised nor provided for as a formula in the MOA-AD, which the government refused to sign. “It is unfair to describe the MILF as secessionist if the intention is good and not to intrigue everyone’s mind," he said. On the issue of Islamic state, Ameen said the MILF intends to establish a kind of state or substate suitable to the Bangsamoro people, free of imposition, that would respond to their aspirations. He recalled that the late MILF Chairman Salamat Hashim, in an interview in 1999 at Camp Abubakar, said that if the Bangsamoro people want a “communist state," let them have it. Analysts have described that as the leader’s subscription to the Islamic principle of “people’s consultation" in “running the affairs of the community." On the MOA-AD’s sellout of Mindanao to the Bangsamoro people, Ameen said many people are ignorant of history and the rights of the Moros over this island. He explained that prior to the coming of the Spaniards in 1521, Mindanao was under the suzerainty of the Moro sultanates and during the 333 year Moro-Spanish War, Spain only ruled over their encampments, fortifications, but outside the Moros were in control. He added that when the Americans came in 1898, they signed with the Moros the Kiram-Bates Treay of 1898 and the Carpenter Agreement in 1915 and created the Moro Province, which provided for a separate administration of Moro affairs by American administrators. It is not fair to say that the MOA-AD provided for a sellout of Mindanao to the Bangsamoro people or MILF, because only about 15-17% of it comprised the territory of the future Bangsamoro state or sub-state. - GMANews.TV