Vigilance against hatred, fear and prejudice
IGNS of life are now dawning on Marawi, yet peace remains elusive for Mindanao as the threat of terror and insurgency looms larger than ever. Days after President Rodrigo Duterte declared Marawi City liberated from the influence of the Maute group, he joined voices from the international community calling for government forces on Tuesday to keep their guard up against “persisting threats of terrorism,” warning that Islamic State- inspired terrorists could still launch retaliatory attacks.
now that their global base camp in Raqqa, Syria has collapsed, the Philippines has no choice but to remain vigilant as it lies along the “fault lines in the region,” where other nations that have young Muslim populations also stand vulnerable to the lure of the ideology of IS extremism.
Malaysian Defense Minister Dato’ Seri Hishammudin Tun Hussein explains these “fault lines” of vulnerability eloquently before peers at the Asean defense ministers’ meeting at Clark Air Base in Pampanga on Monday:
“This threat to our region is real and multidimensional, whether from self-radicalized lone wolves. There is a grave danger that existing fault-lines in our region will be exploited as well as exacerbated by DAESH’s (IS) increasing presence. This, then, leads to what I see as the next challenge, namely the growth of
violent persecution in Myanmar.
It is estimated that 112,000 of them have taken the risk of entering Malaysia over a period of three years to 2015 by boat across the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. Before violence broke out in Myanmar in August, the United Nations estimated as many as 420,000 Rohingya refugees were already in Southeast Asia, while 120,000 others are internally displaced.
Malaysia’s defense minister sees the Rohingya issue as a potential for the long term.
has learned of a story of a teenaged boy who joined the Maute battle with government troops for control of Marawi. The men in uniform let him run away stray kid, but he was hiding a gun underneath his shirt and used it to kill an unsuspecting soldier.
Dansalan College teacher Lordvin Acopio, who was rescued along with Catholic priest Father Chito Soganub on September 16, gave a
Acopio had told reporters in Marawi the child warriors were
From an economic perspective, the Asian Development Bank urges governments to stem the tide of terrorism by addressing the basic problem of development and inequality among the vulnerable communities.
Andrew Clinton, ADB Organizational Resilience head, said at a forum in the Asian Institute of Management in Makati on Tuesday, that until real development happens, until wealth distribution and access to power and justice happens, the festering issues that fuel terrorism will continue not just in Mindanao but throughout the world.
We reiterate the call for fellow Filipinos to support the pursuit of peace, tolerance, justice and equality for all. We urge parents, our educational and social institutions, as well as society in general, to go back to the basics – providing children positive family values that reject hatred, fear and prejudice. We echo the call of Minister Hishammudin of Malaysia never to allow the young generation of today to become “vulnerable targets, ripe for the prospect of radicalization” by terrorist forces that continue to lurk in the shadows of our own domestic struggle for inclusive development.