MUSLIM MINORITIES
Fred Hill on the Demographic Solution in Mindanao
Mindanao is continuing to earn its reputation as the "wild west of the Philippines." Kidnapping and banditry, ethnic and "religious" violence, all contribute to the island's frontier image.
Western journalists choose words like "Muslim" and "extremist" as if they are interchangeable, and add terms like "terrorist" to cast judgement on their cause. Repeated acts of violence appear to be beyond explanation, as if war was the inevitable result of mixing Christians with Muslims.
Mindanao is an island with a culture and history quite different from the rest of the Philippines. Islam has dominated the island for centuries. Its proud mujaheddin have defended their homes against colonial invaders from Spain, the United States and Japan. Now the Philippine government rules Mindanao, and they are exploiting the resources, diluting the Muslim majority and containing tribal peoples in enclaves of underdevelopment. Settlers from the crowded and predominantly Christian Luzon and Visayan islands have grown into a dominant culture, seizing Muslim homelands declared 'public domain' by the courts of Manila. Newcomers prosper while the indigenous displaced and abandoned to poverty.
An armed resistance developed in the late 60s, with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) opposing the Philippine military and Christian vigilante forces. President Ferdinand Marcos responded with force... MNLF leaders sought recognition from the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the United Nations. Under pressure from Islamic states, Marcos began peace negotiations and offered a formula or regional autonomy. Today the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) poses as a cosmetic independence that satisfies no one. Yet MNLF Chairman Nur Misuari is cautiously committed to this experiment, and in forces his end of the cease-fire while giving peace a chance. More militant members of MNLF and the children if guerrillas martyred in the separatist battles of the 70s have chosen more dramatic means of resistance, including Abu Sayyaf.
Containing the Muslims
"Ethnic cleansing" is a harsh term to apply to the Philippine government. The tools of Philippine's ethnic cleansing are more subtle, and easier for the outside world to ignore.
In addition to settlement and "development" policies, he Philippine government regularly manipulates population statistics to minimize the Muslim count. Since only Christian birth and death records are recognized as official, there is no accurate census available on the current Muslim population. Voter representation and the need for government services Muslim sectors can thus be denied or devalued, and electoral results are easily manipulated. Despite autonomy votes in 13 provinces with apparent Muslim majorities, autonomy was granted in only the four poorest provinces. Any visitor can see that the number of Muslims appear to be much more than the official estimates claim. The explanation given by the government is that the rest were "squatters" routinely evicted when their settlements were burned.
Development planners allocate resources to benefit Christian settlers at the expense of native Muslims. The National Power Company (NPC) has crowded 7 hydroelectric dams along a 30-km. stretch of the Agus River, to power the factories of lligan and Cagayan de Oro. This enormous strain is destroying Lake Lanao, the river's source. For centuries the Maranao ("people of the lake") have relied on this lake for the subsistence of thousands. Now more than half of it has been drained away while Muslim cities like Marawi suffer diminished resources. NPC executives explain that some "Muslim bandits" have retaliated by cutting power lines and sabotaging generators. These officials dismiss the international protest of this ecocide.Hardships to the Muslim population seem to attract little concern.
Cheap energy lures out-of-town contractors to build up industry along the coast. National Steel Company, the Philippines' largest steel mill, is often trumpeted as a grand development scheme to industrialize northern Mindanao. Located in the Muslim countryside, west of Iligan City, it is a major employer in the area. But most of the 4000 employees are Christian Visayans, many of whom were brought there... in the 1970s. They displace farming and fishing villages. Despite the official line that "local hiring" was the rule, no Maranao names could be found on the union list. Responding to a query that how many Muslims work here, one of the bosses said, "Five or ten, I'd say." Not percent, but only 5 or 10 out of 4000. It is bluntly said that local Muslims are not educated enough to be employable in the steel mill. Recent efforts by the Mayor of Iligan to expel all Muslim students from the city's public schools would presumably preserve this imbalance.
The media publishes reports about the "Muslim" violence in Mindanao, but not the reasons for their frustration. Philippine policies to water down and displace the Muslim majority (now a minority, since the 1950s) government repression of all resistance and schemes of token "autonomy" co-opts the moderates and enrages the rest. As the forests and lakes recede and the benefits of the resources are drained off to others, some Muslims feel compelled to take more drastic action. Groups like Abu Sayyaf commit regrettable acts of violence, but these actions can hardly be dismissed as "pointless terrorism" Instead, these are the predictable responses of an endangered people.
(Source: The Islamic Horton, March/April, 1996)
Impact International on Tatar Muslims in Ukraine
Since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the independence of Ukraine in 1991, Moscow has found it convenient to fan the flames of Crimea's independence from Ukraine, using the ethnic Russians who make up 70% of the 2.7 million population. Caught up in this crossfire are the returning Tatar Muslims who had been cleansed from their homeland by their historic enemies, the Russians during Stalin's rule. The Tatars, though now strangers in their own country and a marginalized small minority of 250,000 are not prepared to play second fiddle to the Russian Slavs once again. They are determined to oppose Crimea's secession from Ukraine while carrying on the struggle for the recognition of their rights and resettlement in the land of their forefathers.
The 142-member Kurultay Tatar National or the Assembly of Crimean Tatars has asked its representatives "UN resist attempts at Crimea's secession and to draw the attention of the world to the problems of the Crimean Tatars and help create conditions for the implementation of their right to self-determination". The concluding first session of the third Kurultay in Simferopol also appealed on 29 June, 1996 to world organizations such as the UN, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the Council of Europe, to help Ukraine restore political, civil, economic, social and cultural rights of the Crimean Tatars.
According to the deputy prime minister of the Crimean regional government, Ilmi Umerov, of the 250,000 Crimean Tatars now living in Crimea, 120,000 are homeless, more than 20,000 people who are building homes for themselves are unable to complete them because they have no money left; and 40,000 are jobless. Behind these stark statistics is a far more grim situation of the families who are having to fend for themselves 51% of the children suffer from various diseases and there are vacancies for only 8,000 of them in the pre- school institutions; of the women, 80% are unable to get any secure government jobs, when "84% of them have higher and middle professional education"; and 126,000 of the Crimean Tatars have still to get recognition of Ukrainian citizenship from the state,
Most Crimean Tatars are living in appalling conditions, compared to which their station of life in their enforced exile in the former Soviet Union was often much better. The returning Crimean Tatars, half of whom have trekked back in the past six years, to see their former homes and lands occupied by Russian settlers. The UN Coordinator in Crimea, Lubov Horich, says more than 50% of the Crimean Tatar Population 'have no water or electricity in their homes and no paved roads' in their settlements.
The Commission of the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers investigating the causes and consequences of the Crimean Tatar unrest in Eastern Crimea in June 1995 came to the conclusion that 'the Crimean Tatars are much worse off than the rest of the population, and the meagre funding provided by the government to integrate into society the deported people, only those who have returned so far, it will take 100 years to implement the programme.
The Ansar Foundation is a charity organization working to raise Islamic awareness and improve the material welfare of the Ukrainian Muslims, points out: "Despite the disintegration of the USSR and all the democratic process taking place in Ukraine and in the rest of ex-Soviet Republics, the policy of deprivation of Muslims' full access to their land continues, and discrimination and delimitation to all forms of civil rights their non-indigenous counterparts enjoy.
The Shia-Sunni Divide in Pakistan
Editorial, The Hindustan Times, 20 Aug, 1996
Pakistan is no stranger to sectarian violence and social turmoil. The recrudescence of Shia-Sunni violence is as dangerous as it is depressingly familiar. Karachi today is of course a dying city which is not only rocked by religious and political violence but also by the rise of the mafiosi and the underworld. The Mohajirs are being treated as second-class citizens. If in the 1970s the chauvinist Pakistanis forced the Bangladeshis to secede, the Mohajirs today are perhaps being pushed to a similar plight. Over 2,000 people died in Karachi last year in communal violence.
The continuing turmoil in Pakistan has exposed the myth that religion can be a sound basis of nationalism. Pakistan which does not miss any opportunity to blame India for communal violence or insurgency in Kashmir has been most intolerant towards the Mohajirs, Shias and the microscopic minority community of Ahmediyas. Religious fanaticism and terrorist violence extended into Kashmir by Pakistani leaders are only the flip side of the coin of extremism and terrorism stalking Pakistan. In reality, Pakistan's own existence is precarious. It is paying the price for its inability to accept cultural pluralism. Sectarian violence is the result of multi- dimensional conflicts in Pakistani society which have been left to fester.
