GENERAL (Philippines): Soldiers burn houses, blocks food supply for over 34,000 displaced families in Maguindanao 

Dear Friends,

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) is writing to draw your attention to the continuing food blockade the military has imposed in Maguindanao thereby depriving over 34,000 families of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) of their food rations. The military are deliberately preventing food and relief goods that relief organizations are trying to deliver by holding them at check points.

CASE DETAILS: (According to information received from the Mindanao Peoples Caucus (MPC))

On 28th May 2009, during a coordination meeting among the humanitarian agencies and leaders of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Cotabato City, complaints were raised that the military had been undermining the relief operations by deciding and controlling when and how much relief they should only be giving away.

Also, it is reported that truck-loads of rice intended for the IDPs and 11 truckloads of relief goods from the International Committee on the Red Cross (ICRC) had not reached the evacuees in Datu Piang, Maguindanao, as they were held up at military checkpoints on May 27 and May 5 respectively.

The military has not provided any reasonable explanations to the relief organizations as to why they are preventing the entry of food and relief supplies. The actions by the military is typical and even reminiscent of the decades of perpetual practice of preventing entry of food supplies intended for the IDPs on the pretext that they would end up being passed onto or consumed by the rebels themselves.

The relief organization who has been actively involved in the MPC’s work, reported that of the 50,333 internally displaced families in Maguindanao needing food and relief supplies, only 15,522 families had been able to receive assistance. Apart from these, there have also been civilians who are trapped in the municipality of Datu Piang, Maguindanao and effectively cut off from any outside help and contact.

On May 31, another 200 families fled their houses. This is in addition to the 6,277 families of IDPs who were reported to have fled from their village last week. Once again, the latest evacuation had been prompted by the recent fighting between government militias and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels and the subsequent burning of several houses belonging to civilians.

The military’s action is contrary to the provisions of the United National Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (UNGPID), to which the Philippine government is under obligation to implement and observe. Principle 10 and 25 of the UNGPID clearly stipulates that “Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) shall be protected, in particular against starvation as a form of combat” and that the “authorities concerned shall grant and facilitate the free passage of humanitarian assistance and grant persons engaged in the provision of such assistance rapid and unimpeded access to the internally displaced” respectively.

Apart from being denied food, there are also reports that the military had burned houses of some civilians in remote villages in the municipalities of Datu Piang in Maguindanao and in Midsayap, North Cotabato. The AHRC has already been informed of the victim’s account of these incidents and is collecting further details. However, despite the gravity of the violence taking place there, the affected victims have since been too frightened to pursue complaints against the soldiers.

It is because this latest incident of burning took place after villagers in Nunangan in Talayan, also in Maguindanao, filed complaints of arson on May 7 against the soldiers before the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) in Region 12. They have accused soldiers as having been responsible for torching about 150 houses of civilians in their community. According to a report from Bantay Ceasefire, a community-based grassroots organization that monitors the implementation of the ceasefire agreement between the government and the MILF, at least 92 houses had also been burned in the village of Macasendig in the town of Midsayap, North Cotabato.

Since the conflict in some parts of Mindanao began afresh in August 2008, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) has launched a military offensive against the rebel commanders of the MILF. Since then, a large number of these IDPs have been forced to remain in cramped evacuation centers, government buildings and schoolhouses, as they are waiting to return to their respective villages.

On 10th March 2009, the sister organization of the AHRC, Asian Legal Resource Center (ALRC), expressed serious concern in its Oral Statement to the 10th Session of the UN Human Rights Council, over the military practice of denying entry of food and the relief supplies intended to IDPs. For further details please read: ALRC-COS-10-16-2009

You may also refer to the chapter in the 2008 report on the Philippines in 2008, entitled the “the Human Cost of Insecurity“, which the AHRC published in the occasion of the International Human Rights Day.

SUGGESTED ACTION:
Please write letters to the concerned authorities below requesting them to immediately conduct an inquiry into allegations that the soldiers are blocking food supplies and relief goods to evacuees. These supplies should immediately be made available to them; and that the military must be sanctioned if it is proved that are continuing to do so.

Also the complaints of arson, which the civilians filed against soldiers accused of having been responsible for the burning hundreds of houses in the villages of Talayan, Maguindanao and Midsayap, North Cotabato respectively, must be resolved promptly.

The AHRC has also written letters to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, on adequate housing and the independent expert on minority issues for their appropriate intervention.

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