Participants lambasted Arroyo for suspending peace talks with MILF

By Kazi Mahmood, IOL Southeast Asia Correspondent

KUALA LUMPUR, April 26 (IslamOnline.net) - An unprecedented event brought some 45,000 Muslim women, mostly clad in Islamic dresses with head scarves and long robes, to meet at the Peoples Park, Camp Amai Pakpak, in Marawi City in southern Philippines on April 24-25, 2003.

They discussed politics, gender equality and the separatist war in southern Philippines, showing the freedom women enjoys in Islam, at least among the Bangsamoro’s Muslims.

Professor Abhoud Sayed Lingga of the Bangsamoro Peoples Consultative Assembly (BPCA) expressed great satisfaction on the success of the meeting that assembled women of Islamic faith and of all walks of life into one strong faction.

Lingga, in an e-mail to IslamOnline.net on Friday, April 25, said it is the first time Bangsamoro women have gathered in such large numbers in a formal assembly to express themselves.

A series of consultation and consensus-building meetings among the women sector of the Bangsamoro people made this assembly possible.

“The women who participated represented the entire spectrum of Muslim society as well as the different areas and provinces of the Bangsamoro homeland,” said Saguira Pendaliday, chairperson of the assembly.

A wide range of issues from gender discrimination to political concerns was addressed by the Assembly.

The current plight of Muslim women in the context of the present situation of the Bangsamoro people and the on-going war in Mindanao took center stage in the discussions.

Women forms more than 50% of the Muslim population in the Philippines, many of them are struggling to earn a living and handling their families almost single handedly due to the war in the region.

Most of their males are out there fighting for an elusive independence of the Mindanao region, at least for the largely Muslim dominated areas.

The plight of Muslim women in the southern Philippines and in other parts of the largely Christian country has remained unheard and unknown to the world, but this assembly of 45,000 showed the strength of the Muslim women in dealing with issues affecting them.

Most women are victims of the ongoing war but they are also supporters of the war, and they always vote almost unanimously in favor of the pro-war, pro-independence factions in the civil society.

“Women are also one of the most ardent supporters of the war for independence, they would be very disappointed if the long years of wars in this region ended in no gains for the Muslims,” said a participant in the conference.

The regime of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has also come under fire from the women who decried that the suspension of peace talks between the warring factions, involving the Filipino government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), has affected them greatly.

The assembly approved several consensuses on the final day of the meeting, reaffirming their faith and belief in Islam as the only complete system of life that brings true liberation to women and mankind.

They also unequivocally proclaimed that only through the peaceful and democratic process of an U.N.-supervised referendum in the Bangsamoro homeland that the rights of the Muslims to self-determination, freedom and political independence will be achieved.

The MILF is the major fighting force in the Mindanao region, struggling for an independent Islamic state after more than 20 years of military operations against what they call “occupying” forces from Manila.

Most of the women who met at the Assembly are also members of the MILF’s political and women’s wings, preparing themselves to run the civil society of the Bangsamoro in the event peace is finally imposed on the region.

One of the most prominent Bangsamoro women, Amira Lidasan of the Moro Christian People’s Association (MCPA) told IslamOnline.net in a recent interview that the plight of women in the region was an uphill battle due to wars and poverty.

She is currently campaigning for the safe return and the resettlement of 100,000 Muslim families, most of them displaced during the recent fighting in the Pikit region.

Lidasan, one of the most outspoken women in Mindanao supports the MILF’s war for independence and is one of the strongest censors of the Arroyo regime on its policies regarding Muslims and the Mindanao region.

The assembly, in its finality, said Muslim women were being deprived of those rights and privileges bestowed on them by Islam, due to the ongoing war and to the breakdown of talks between the warring factions.

They are mostly disappointed by the policies of the Arroyo regime, after giving full support to the president to achieve peace in the region.

“Women finds it very difficult to discharge their obligations and perform their responsibilities and duties as wives, mothers, and as human-building beings committed to the establishment of a stable, strong and upright family which is the foundation of a just, moral and peaceful human society;” said the final draft of the declaration of the Assembly of women.

They reminded the Arroyo regime that as Muslims they stand firmly for peace and justice.

They also endorsed the popular consensus that the war in Mindanao, as elsewhere on earth, should be resolved through peaceful dialogues, through the U.N. and through a democratic process.