MILF negotiator salutes 44 gallant SAF men, disagrees it was a massacre

One of the peace negotiators of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has hailed the gallantry of the 44 Special Action Force (SAF) troopers who fought and died in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, but disagreed with the Senate’s use of the word “massacre.”

“In my view, the term ‘massacre’ is if you kill people, murder people (who are unarmed) and have no way to fight back, you kill them in group, or whatsoever, that is massacre,” said Hadji Abdullah Camlian of the MILF peace panel in the negotiations with the Government of the Philippines (GPH).

He spoke with the Manila Bulletin at the sidelines of the commemoration on Wednesday of the 47th anniversary of the Jabidah Massacre on Corregidor Island.

A check with Cambridge Dictionaries on the Internet showed this definition of a massacre: “The killing of a large number of people, especially people who are not involved in any fighting or have no way of defending themselves.”

It could be recalled that Sen. Grace Poe Llamanzares, who chairs the Senate Committee on Public Order, described the incident as a “massacre” triggered by the SAF’s raid on Malaysian militant Zulkifli bin Hir (alias Marwan) and his understudy, Filipino Abdul Basit Usman.

The SAF men killed Marwan but Usman escaped.

Camlian said labeling soldiers who fought a war, the gallant soldiers, citing the example of the 44 SAF commandos who died on January 25, as having died in a massacre is not a good term to use.

“You removed their (SAF men) being heroes, you removed their being gallant fighters,” said Camlian, who is also widely known among Moros, particularly the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), for having led the sending to Malaysia in late 1990s of the MNLF’s Top 90 cadres for military and guerrilla warfare training on Jampiras Island.

“They fought a bloody war, they fought, bravery was there, then you say it is a massacre, that means they were unarmed,” he said.

“Masasayang ‘ yung mga medals, the honor bestowed upon these people. They were not massacred, they fought a gallant fight,” said the MILF negotiator.

“And I salute them for their bravery, we salute them for their sense of duty to honor the country. But as I said, to call that incident a massacre, that is a misnomer,” he stressed.

He said the SAF men came to Mamasapano in full battle gear, ready to fight and knew what they were getting into.

Camlian said genuine massacres were committed against the Moros in the Jabidah Massacre, the Manili Massacre, the Pata Massacres, Bud Daho Massacre because the victims were not armed and they had no way to defend themselves.

Saying the SAF 44 were massacred, is “a misrepresentation of their gallantry, who died fighting a war, it is martyrdom.”

Camlian said the Philippine National Police’s (PNP) SAF members “did not chicken out. If they chickened out, then maybe they were massacred. But they did not chicken out, they fought.”

He said that all of a sudden the whole nation was rocked by the incident, during which 18 MILF members and some civilians were also killed.

Camlian said the incident in Mamasapano is not the first time.

He recalled that the PNP’s predecessor, the Philippine Constabulary ( PC), had an elite group called the “Nenita Unit” who were sent to the Korean War in the 1950s.