History of Armed Conflict
With reference to the Official MNLF Blogsite, "the MNLF believes that the Bangsamoro Land is already a sovereign nation hundreds of years before it was illegally annexed as part of the Philippines in the 1935 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines."
Mindanao became a land for new beginnings when broad tracts of land were given away by the Philippine government from 1903 to the 1970s to migrants from other parts of the country in a so-called Homestead Program., akin to Indonesia's transmigrasi. There was no land titling system by the natives of Mindanao at that time. The Philippine government took advantage of the absence of land titles to give away lots in Mindanao to poor farmers and other migrants from other parts of the country. Mindanao saw itself as the adopted home of a rapidly burgeoning population of Christian settlers who rapidly encroached on the living areas of the original Muslim and tribal residents, who now began to feel that they were also being robbed of their lands and the economic opportunities they provided.
With that systematic encroachment, the natives, especially the original Muslim and Lumad segments, developed a deep-seated distrust of the officials of the Philippine government, a government under which they felt they were being treated as second-class citizens. As a result of the systematic land grabbing, sporadic fighting in various parts of Mindanao ensued between the natives and the troops/militias of the Philippine government. Due to this, Mindanao become a battle ground of intense armed conflict, even the Americans sent forces to battle frontiers in Mindanao.
During the 1970s, President Ferdinand Marcos formed the ILAGA and CHDF (Civilian Home Defense Force). ILAGA is a Christian militia which claims to defend Christians from attacks perpetrated by Muslims. The ILAGA was one of the groups who fiercely fought against the MNLF. The ILAGA members were indoctrinated with religious motivation and it is rumored that the ILAGA had a reputation for cannibalism. After over three decades, in the year 2011, the ILAGA embraced the egalitarian ideology of MNLF and have joined forces with their used to be mortal enemy—the MNLF.
Read more about this topic: Moro National Liberation Front
Famous quotes containing the words history of, history, armed and/or conflict:
“I am not a literary man.... I am a man of science, and I am interested in that branch of Anthropology which deals with the history of human speech.”
—J.A.H. (James Augustus Henry)
“... all big changes in human history have been arrived at slowly and through many compromises.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“it pleaseth me when I see through the meadows
The tents and pavilions set up, and great joy have I
When I see o’er the campana knights armed and horses arrayed.
And it pleaseth me when the scouts set in flight the folk with
their goods;
And it pleaseth me when I see coming together after them an host of
armed men.”
—Bertrans De Born (fl. 12th century)
“Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)