By Roy Ramos
ZAMBOANGA, The Philippines
The Philippines military has denied claims that the country's one time largest Muslim rebel group is keeping weapons manufacturing facilities in undisclosed locations in the central part of Mindanao island, despite a peace deal with the government.
In statement issued Saturday by the Media Bureau of the Office of Presidential Adviser on Peace Process (OPAPP), Major General Edmundo Pangilinan, chief of the Army's 6th Infantry Division based in Maguindanao province, was quoted as saying that the military has verified such claims and "ground operatives validated the absence of such facilities."
“Our ground forces have already verified such claims. There is no truth to such allegations,” Pangilinan said.
Philippine Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, Jr. recently claimed that some weapons decommissioned by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) provide strong evidence that the group has its own weapons manufacturing factory.
Another senator, Francis Escudero, last month urged the MILF to come clean on a reported weapons manufacturing facility that allegedly produces high-powered firearms and explosives.
Escudero issued the statement almost a week after the MILF turned over 75 assault rifles and 145 rebels left the group’s armed wing to return to civilian life as part of a peace process with the government.
He said that it would have been a more credible confidence-building measure if the MILF had surrendered its alleged weapons machinery rather than “just a small portion of its firearms collection".
“The MILF should have first surrendered their machinery that makes guns, bullets and bombs. It’s useless to surrender guns when they can easily make new ones,” he said.
He underlined that the MILF -- as “our partners in peace supposedly” -- should disclose how the group had been able to collect firearms and ammunition, as well as their sources and suppliers.
Referring to statements by the MILF’s chief negotiator that decommissioning would proceed only if a draft law on an autonomous Bangsamoro region in the south were passed, he vowed to press for the inclusion of the process in the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL).
Gradual decommissioning among the 10,000 estimated members of MILF’s armed wing is part of the Annex on Normalization of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro, which was signed by the MILF and the government in early 2014.
It serves as the final peace agreement after 17 years of on-and-off and often intractable negotiations.
Under the deal, 30 percent of combatants and weapons will be decommissioned after the BBL’s passage, 35 percent after a plebiscite and the appointment of a transition authority, and 35 percent upon the Bangsamoro government’s establishment.
Pangilinan made clear that “as far as the command is concerned there are no weapons facilities that the MILF are maintaining in our area of jurisdiction.”
Last month, army Public Affairs Office Chief Lieutenant Colonel Harold Cabunoc stressed that the Philippine armed forces has not monitored any weapons facilities owned or operated by the MILF in Mindanao or in other parts of the country.
Cabunoc said that outside of a firearms factory seized in Camp Abubakar in 2000, there has been no report about the existence or construction of rehabilitated weapons facilities of the MILF, contrary to several recent allegations in the media.
Brig. General Manolito Orense, chairperson of the army's Ad hoc Joint Action Group also refuted the allegations of Escudero.
"We have not monitored any reported weapons facilities. But we are open to information and evidence, if there are any so that we can verify and do what has to be done," Orense said.
