Evacuees Mount: Exodus for Peace
Collateral Damage, helpless victims of war— these are how the civilians displaced by the fighting between government forces and MILF fighters have been usually described. In news report, the evacuees are portrayed as powerless creatures, relying on other people's support as they count the length of days in evacuation centers. Repeated calls for the hostilities to stop so that the civilians can go on with their lives had been unheeded. After four months of waiting since the military offensives began on February 11, 2003, the evacuees have had enough. They decided it was time to go home. They have taken a bold step to press the government and the rebels to go back to the negotiating table. This is the story Bakwit Power: The People's Exodus to Peace.
On June 24-26, evacuees, both young and old, marched from different evacuation centers in Pikit, Pagalungan and Pagagawan and gathered in the town of Pagalungan in Maguindanao. They reiterated their call for the government and the MILF to declare an immediate ceasefire and resume peace negotiations. As many as 8,000 evacuees from the conflict areas of Pikit in Cotabato province and Pagalungan and Pagagawan in the province of Maguindanao staged a protest that has come to be known also as Suara Kalilintad, a Maguindanoan term meaning "voices for peace."
Carrying placards bearing their demands for a ceasefire and calls for peace, the "bakwits" lined one side of the Davao-Cotabato highway, forming a line that stretched for nearly 10 kilometers. In Pagalungan, the protesters handed their manifesto, bearing six demands, to Secretary Teresita Ging Deles, who promised to bring it to the attention of the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
The hi-way stand-ins peacefully continued for the next few days. Pockets of "silent protest" by the evacuees in nearby areas sustained the call for a bilateral ceasefire and the return for the government and the MILF to the negotiating table. That there were no violent incidents during the protest activities is testimony to the ability of the evacuees to police themselves and to the recognition of authorities of the peaceful conduct of the mass action.
The "Bakwit Power" was an expression of Suara Kalilintad. It was historic as the first ever collective action by people who experienced evacuations repeatedly since they can remember. Their decision to assert their right to peace and rehabilitation gained the support of NGOs, church groups, ulamas, local government officials, barangay leaders, and Bangsamoro civil society, and solidarity networks in Manila and Mindanao.
On July 19, 2003, the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front declared a bilateral ceasefire and moved towards the resumption of the peace process. Doubtless, the protests helped hasten the moves toward the cessation of hostilities. Now that the guns have been silenced, the evacuees have started to go home to face yet another struggle for survival and rehabilitation, in their communities and farms laid to waste by war. But they now have a new reason to hope. As their manifesto had said:
"We have ultimately placed our lives and safety in the hands of the merciful and ever-protective God, our Allah, our Magbabaya. But we realize that the conflict in Mindanao that has made us evacuees can be settled peacefully through negotiations and political settlement. We therefore dedicate Bakwit Power to this continuing search for the end of the conflict in Mindanao."