World Bulletin / News Desk

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) criticised a former senator, Franklin Drilon, Saturday for opposing for opposing the internationalization of the Mindanao peace talks with governmen, GMA news agency said.

A member of the MILF peace panel said the Moro people want the international community involved because Filipinos had been shortchanging them for almost a century.

"We can't fix ourselves, we need outsiders to help us and act as guarantors that you will not cheat us," he said in an article on the MILF website (www.luwaran.com).

Drilon had questioned the participation of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in the peace efforts.

But the MILF peace panel member cited the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) as a living example of how Filipinos, "with some exceptions," shortchanged the Moros.

The Philippines, an archipelagic country located in the western Pacific Ocean, has a population of 90 million people. The population of Muslims is about 12 million. Between the years 1450 and 1515, two Islamic principalities were founded on the islands of Sulu and Mindanao. Muslims generally refuse to consider themselves Filipinos, saying they belong to the Bangsa Moro (Moro nation).

Islam came to the Philippines in the 13th century 200 years before Christianity did.

After four decades of armed conflict between the Filipino state and the Moro Muslims, the two parties agreed to sign an agreement that would end the conflict. However, the supreme court of the Philippine declared the agreement illegal on August 4, which caused the conflict to resume.

The displaced families are staying in tents pitched on marshlands.

Güncelleme Tarihi: 12 Nisan 2009, 13:54