GINGGING A. VALLE Evacuees
There’s more than meets the eye in evacuation centers, whether home-based, in the small tents provided by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), at the school or in community gyms around Lanao del Norte. In addition to the lack of food and water is the lack of light and electric fan at night to temporarily ease the unbearable heat.
It is certainly wrong to say that the Maranao evacuees are getting by. They are forced in this situation by the so-called “Maute rebellion” that is supposed to be ISIS—inspired. And it doesn’t mean that their children should be made to bear the brunt and suffer the scourge, as our government has the responsibility and moral obligation to respond to the humanitarian crisis.
It has been over two months since thousands of families were driven out from their ruined abodes, but the humanitarian response in terms of food and water provisions have come into the besieged people in trickles. While we are reading about so-called government assistance given to those in evacuation centers, a visit to some of these places makes one wonder where the assistance have gone.
The second wave of the National Interfaith Humanitarian Mission was recently held in Iligan City. The activity drew in over a hundred participants from different sectors, including nuns and priests from various congregations in the different regions of the Philippines. Many of the participants have joined for the first time and some of them were moved to tears when the children expressed their aspiration to go back to their homes even if they were told by neighbours that there was no more house they could call their home there.
There was confusion, fear, doubt and uncertainty in their eyes as they looked into sympathetic gazes from the mission members. Their thin bodies and scaly skin speak of the kind of violence that slowly annihilate their race, and yet, they are forced to survive, to eat cooked rice and canned tinapa.
The chagrin on the faces of the parents pierced through the hearts of the medical personnel, who realized that no amount of medicines can help the evacuees without the proper food to nourish them.
While it is only right to hype soldiers who died in the fighting as government is wont to do, the hapless tens of thousands among evacuees are not getting the attention they also deserve. By not providing enough care and assistance for their needs, the evacuees are seemingly made to suffer a fate worse than death.
This is an open invitation to all and sundry, to every Filipino who cares about our fellow human beings, Filipinos who are caught in a war that is not of their own making, to go there and see for yourselves how our Muslim sisters and brothers are trying to survive their hostile situation. Assistance of all kinds is so wanting such that they are forced to do things that are haram to their culture.
They are being stripped of their humanity in their decrepit situation, and if the problems are not addressed at once, God forbid what will happen next. They want to go back to their homes, even if thesearere gone, because they want to rebuild and start all over. And yet, the national government seems deaf and blind to all these.--