1974 ‘massacre’ hoax recycled for a 2014 moneymaking scam

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LOSSAL hoax contrived in 1974 by the insurgent Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) of an alleged massacre of 1,500 Muslims in a barangay called Malisbong in Sultan Kudarat province, was intended to rouse to anger Muslim Arab leaders, especially the fiery Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi, so they would support, with their newfound oil wealth, the fledgling Moro insurgency.

The idea came from the propaganda success of the so-called Jabidah “massacre,” another hoax — that earlier case a concoction of then opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr. — which had convinced many Muslim students in Manila to join the MNLF. Because “Jabidah” revealed Marcos’ secret plans to invade Sabah, it prodded Malaysia into throwing its full support behind the MNLF, giving it huge funds to buy arms, training its first corps of military officers, and providing its leaders refuge in their territory.

In the case of the Malisbong deception, the MNLF thought that such a “massacre” could further inflame Gaddafi against the Marcos government that he would convince Middle East Muslim nations to stop exporting oil to the Philippines. Indeed, it was reported at the time that Gadaffi, after listening to a BBC news broadcast that a Christian paramilitary group called Ilagas had massacred 70 Muslims, became so enraged that he announced that he would ask Muslim countries to impose an oil embargo against the Philippines. While that plan fell through, Gaddafi still sent financial aid to the MNLF, and provided refuge to its leaders, mainly its chairman Nur Misuari.

Ironically though, it was the MNLF’s efforts to fool the media into believing its deception of a massacre of Muslims in Sultan Kudarat that provides us — 45 years later — with one of the most convincing evidence that those killings never occurred.

Fake story

The MNLF tried hard to sell the fake story of a massacre to foreign media. Only the bought it, but qualified it as a “rumor” in a March 25, 1975 piece that was a wrap-up of the entire Muslim insurgency. That was the first and last time foreign or local media referred to a “Malisbong massacre.”

Quoting an unidentified “Moslem,” the piece read:

“In Palimbang ( municipality where Malisbong was) a detachment of marines systematically started executing Moslem noncombatants last October and 800 were slain, he charged. Non-Moslem sources said that they had heard of the Palimbang incident but that fewer than 200 were killed. The government denies that any such incident occurred, but it is already part of the popular history of the war to local Moslems.”

Fortunately for historical truth, there was one foreign correspondent who was in the area at the time who assiduously investigated the claim, and interviewed Muslims there who tried to sell him the yarn. This was Associated Press Manila Bureau chief Arnold Zeitlin, a very muchrespected journalist who covered and filed many articles on the Moro insurgency in the early years of martial law.

In an email to me in June last year, Zeitlin said that while there were rumors that a massacre occurred, it could not be verified and there were no eyewitnesses, and he therefore did not file even a piece on such a rumor.

“We never found authoritative sources to determine the extent of deaths. We never had a story that met balanced journalism standards,” Zeitlin said.

Impeccable

Zeitlin’s testimony is impeccable, his

Do the photos express horror over a massacre? Zeitlin in Palimbang, where the purported ‘massacre’ occurred, a few days after the alleged event happened. From Amaral, A.E. The Awakening of Milbuk: Diary of a Missionary Priest (2016: Authorhouse, Indiana) integrity and capability as a journalist Milbuk an abundant and peaceful is unquestionable. He covered Mindanao place to live in. However, this situation in the early years of martial did not last very long because law. He wrote critical articles on the of the conflict between the [Moro] army’s campaign against the MNLF, “Blackshirts” and [Ilonggo] Ilagas in including the naval bombing of the ‘70s, which spilled over to Milbuk. Jolo in February 1974. Because of “An Infantry Brigade was sent to his intrepid coverage, the Marcos regime Milbuk to protect the people from deported him in 1976, the first the conflict. But on Aug. 6, 1974, the foreign journalist the Marcos regime first ambush occurred that killed 11 banned from the country. employees of the logging company

Zeitlin would have reported a and nine Manobos. A number of massacre, and he was on the scene employees were also wounded. to have done so quite easily, if it Then on September 3, there was another did occur. But it didn’t. ambush at Barangay Kanipaan

Zeitlin’s Filipino deputy Guillermo where several company employees Santos, also a respected journalist in died on their way home. that period, further explained: “I double-checked “Milbuk was so tense that people the (Malisbong) report didn’t know where to turn to. with my AFP and PC-INP sources, The only way out of Milbuk was our usual intelligence networks and through pump boats, but fearing they all had no information of the that this would cost more lives, the ‘massacre.’ The late Rommel Corro company as well as the military who was with us in the AP and had ordered that people should remain his own private sources throughout calm and stay in their homes to Mindanao drew a blank as well. So avoid being hit by stray bullets. the AP didn’t carry that story.” “Because of the situation, the

With its failure to fool foreign company was forced to close its operation media, the MNLF soon abandoned for more than three months. its project to concoct a yarn about Food and medicine, however, were “1,500 Muslims massacred.” It also provided by the company, and the had become useless to do so. The Society of Oblates of Notre Dame Libyan strongman Gaddafi obviously Sisters helped in giving medical assistance stopped believing such tales: He armtwisted to the wounded. During this the MNLF into agreeing to a time, the Church remained the center peace settlement in 1976 with the of faith and hope for the people Marcos government. Why would he because of its presence, in spite of do that if there had been such a gruesome, the fact that almost 65 percent of the massacre of “1,500 Muslims”? populace of Milbuk left and transferred

There is another account of that to other places in Mindanao period that disproves that there to seek for greener pastures.” was such a massacre of Muslims, After several months of trouble, and that instead, there was a massacre Milbuk was able to move on with of non-Muslims. the arrival of Greenbelt Wood

This is a blog of the Our Lady of Products Inc. (owned by a Chinese Perpetual Help Parish in Milbuk, national) whose employees which is just 10 kilometers away from and workers came from Labasan, Malisbong. The blog had a history Zamboanga del Sur. The community of the parish’s area, which covers the was again alive and happy. The entire Palimbang municipality. It succeeding years up to 1995, when does not mention at all that there Greenbelt finally left Milbuk, was was a massacre in nearby Malisbong relatively peaceful and enjoyable. on Sept. 24, 1974. At the scale it was claimed — 1,500 innocent Moros killed — to have occurred, it would have been impossible for the parish priests not to have mentioned it.

nWeyerhaeuser

The blog in fact really happened:

“It was the existence of [the USowned] Weyerhaeuser Philippines Inc., a logging company that made reveals what

Milbuk

If there had been a massacre of 1,500 Muslims just 10 kilometers away, the biggest such massacre of Muslim ever claimed in our modern history, the parish’s history would have reported it.

If there had been a massacre just 10 kilometers away, would that new company operate there and the Milbuk residents continue to live there, with the prospect of a Muslim retaliation?

A confirmation of this account of the parish history was in the form of a comment posted in my column last Monday, November 4, by Mr. Osias Moscoso: “I was a former member of an auditing firm that serviced Weyerhaeuser Phil’s. logging camp based at Milbuk, Palimbang, Sultan Kudarat until the logging firm closed operation. I will agree with you Mr. Tiglao that no massacre happened among our Muslim brothers and sisters in Malisbong. The massacred victims were Weyerhaeuser’s workers by armed groups.”

A horrific “massacre of 1,500 Muslims and the rape of 1,000 of their women” by soldiers would have been investigated and reported by scholars, who would have the time and resources to do so. No such scholarly studies reported such a massacre.

A University of California 1998 book by Prof. Thomas McKenna, “discussed several cases of atrocities against Muslims. It didn’t mention a “Malisbong massacre” or even rumors of such an atrocity.

A 2014 article in the International Organization for Scientific Research’s

by Marjanie Salic Macaslaong titled “The Liberation Movements in Mindanao: Isla m as a Thrusting Force” was clearly biased for the MNLF and the MILF. It listed 20 incidents of Muslim civilians massacred and even gave vivid details on the “Manili Massacre” of 70 “Muslims civilians — including women and children — mercilessly massacred inside a mosque.”

The study didn’t mention at all a “Malisbong massacre.”

Both studies even discussed the “Jabidah Massacre” as if it really happened, even as I had thoroughly exposed it as a hoax by the Liberal Party.* Yet both had totally no mention at all of a “Malisbong massacre.”

This propaganda project of the 1970s would have been long forgotten, and certainly would not be the subject of a newspaper column, if the Yellows and the Commission on Human Rights headed by Loretta Rosales, gullible or complicit in the scheme, had not allowed it to be resurrected in 2014, for unscrupulous people to use it as a scam to grab millions of pesos through the 2014 Human Rights Victims Compensation Law.

At our nation’s expense — that it is one where Christian soldiers are ruthless murderers of 1,500 helpless Muslims and rapists of 1,000 Muslim women, with its media complicit in hiding such atrocity.

We have never been that kind of people.

Notes

Debunked: Uncovering Hard Truths About EDSA, Martial Law, Marcos, Aquino,