Gabriela solon to US troops in Mindanao conflict areas: back off

“The United States should stop putting its nose where it is not needed or wanted,” Gabriela Women’s Party representative and Mindanaoan solon Luzviminda Ilagan said, one day after a local publication in Mindanao reported sightings of American soldiers in North Cotabato, where an armed conflict between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Armed Forces of the Philippines sparked last week.

“It doesn’t have the right to intervene with matters internal to the Philippines. The agreements allowing US military presence and exercises – the Visiting Forces Agreement and the Mutual Logistics Support Agreement – are in violation of the provisions of the Constitution barring military base operations. Both agreements circumvent the termination of the US-RP Military Bases Agreement in 1991.”

According to Ilagan, the military presence has accomplished nothing but raise the number of human rights violations in conflict areas in Mindanao to alarming proportions.

Since 2002, the people in the southern part of the Philippines are being displaced, tortured and killed. The women are being sexually abused and subjected to indignities, while the children fall victims to abuses and accusations of involvement with the rebels.

Earlier this year, US personnel were reported to be involved in the massacre of residents of Maimbung, Sulu, the closure of the district hospital in Panamao and the vehicular accident involving a tricycle driver and a vehicle boarding American soldiers. Civilians keep on suffering from these atrocities, which are being committed scot-free.

“The experiences of the people in Mindanao speak volumes of the real motive of the US troops' presence in the country.”

Ilagan believes that the exercises and missions are a ruse to cloak the invasive US military combat and intelligence operations in the country, and, in collaboration with the Philippine government, to protect the investments and interests of multi- and trans-national corporations in the Philippine's second biggest island. Mindanao is a mineral rich-land being drooled over by foreign mining and oil giants such as Exxon Mobil, which showed interest in exploring Sulu for oil.