MinJourn members at Camp Abubakar during the fact-finding mission.

We, members of the Mindanao Institute of Journalism (MinJourn) and the Federation of Reporters for Empowerment and Equality (FREE), all based in Mindanao, came together last July 5 to 10 for a visitation to war-torn areas in North Cotabato, Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur and Lanao del Norte.

Despite differences such as religious faiths, organizational affiliations, disciplines, and political influences, we saw only one glaring truth in our six-day in-depth coverage: this war in Mindanao has brought immense damage to human lives, some already irreparable.

Armed only with our paper, pens, and, cameras, we became witness to how the war has destroyed the very soul of the person, whether he or she is a combatant or a member of a simple rural community suddenly caught in the war.

Both as journalists and citizens, we saw the need for a comprehensive and lasting rehabilitation. We also declare it as immediate, considering an impending phase of another war as President Joseph Estrada announced the alleged fall of MILF’s Camp Abubakar and the MILF’s declaration of a jihad, or holy war.

The communities we visited all needed indemnification, reparation, and economic assistance to he civilians. Many people’s homes were either burned or destroyed, while some were badly damaged due to the impact of bombs falling just a few meters away. Other homes were vandalized or ransacked by the combatants.

In Barangay Limbalod, Pagagawan town in Maguindanao, 18-year-old Bai Kong Jama pointed to us a pile of charred wood when we asked her where her home used to be. Of a total of 419 houses here, 411, including Jama’s house, were either destroyed or burned in the area en route to the MILF’s Camp Rajamuda.

In Barangay Rajamuda in Pikit, North Cotabato, the community school was virtually turned into a military barracks while some houses became the soldiers’ sleeping quarters. The community mosque bore bullet holes while a large portion of the wall was ripped off due to a bomb explosion nearby.

In Sitio Kilabao, Carmen, North Cotabato, the war prevented the farmers from tilling their lands, and eventually harvesting crops. Crops from a 10-hectare cornfield here were harvested by MILF troops.

What struck us most, however, was the unpronounced yet obvious need of the civilians for psychological intervention. The war has taken so much toll in the minds and hearts of the people, who struggle to find a sign of life either in their war-torn community or in evacuation centers where subsistence and survival are the name of the game.

In the tent city in the Pikit town plaza, 18-year-old Bai Nalot Payot was nervous how to answer her family’s weekly needs for food, since they fled here from their home in Barangay Balong, in Pikit, North Cotabato, last May. All of the 11 families (or 50 individuals) of the Payot clan camp together in one tent, measuring some 10 square meters. Each family receives a weekly relief assistance of three kilos of rice, two small cans of sardines in tomato sauce, three packs of instant noodles, five sachets of instant coffee and sugar. Life in the evacuation centers is already difficult, yet war-weary people like Payot could not go home, since they do not have homes to go back to.

Most of all, we saw the extra toll of the war on children, who at their young age, are forced to understand and use the language of war. In our consultations with different religious groups and non-government organizations, it is the children who are forced to take the burden of the ugly and inhumane war. Some children from war-torn areas who underwent psycho-social interventions revealed emotions like these about the war: “Do not cry when your house gets burned or bombed” or “The bullet has no friends or enemies.”

As for the combatants, MinJourn and FREE documented atrocities committed by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) as seen by the burning of houses, harvesting of crops and killings of members of the Aromano Manobo community in Kimadzel, Carmen, North Cotabato between November 1999 up to the present.

The MILF mujahideens have likewise set up bunkers and tunnels underneath houses in at least 15 clearly defined and accepted civilian communities in North Cotabato, Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur and Lanao del Norte last March 16, which led to President Joseph Estrada’s declaration of an all-out war against the MILF.

The Philippine Marines were singled out as the most responsible for the burning and looting of not less than 500 houses in communities in North Cotabato, Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur and Lanao del Norte. Both the Army and Marines were likewise pinpointed as having engaged in unauthorized occupation of privately-owned structures and forced evacuation of civilians. The team documented two young deahts, one-year-old and 14-year-old boys, as a result of the shelling in Matanog and Pagagawan towns in Maguindanao.

While we leave to the MILF leadership the responsibility of taking care of the psycho-social needs of their combatants, we, however, strongly urge the Armed Forces of the Philippines to set in place a stress debriefing program for the war-weary soldiers.

We found out in conversations with government soldiers in Camp Abubakar in Matanog, Maguindanao and in Barangay Rajamuda in Pikit, North Cotabato, that they long to go home, to have a nice warm bath, they long for good and tasty food, they long to see their loved ones. But to do all these, the war must end first.

The environment has likewise suffered a heavy toll in the war, particularly with the more than 200,000-hectare Liguasan Marsh which comprise portions of North Cotabato, Maguindana and Sultan Kudarat. Bombing sorties and shelling resulted to fish kills, flight of endemic species of birds, as well as disturbance of the bio-diversity of the marsh.

We recommend the swift, sustained and sometimes, politically-risky interventions made by local officials in the provincial, city, municipal, and barangay levels in responding to the needs of displaced constituents. Some managed to network beyond the traditional sources of relief and medical assistance.

Some them, however, compounded the resurgence of anti-Moro and anti-Christian sentiments with their public pronouncements and political antics. Despite knowing the political implications of coming out with a decision, some of them were forced to either endorse or reject the national government’s all-out war policy.

While there are come members of civil society, even those foreign funded organizations, which may have used the war for their own financial and orientational pursuits, majority of those which responded provided the much-needed comfort and assistance to the displaced civilians.

Many of these civil society groups are also at the forefront of the campaign for the stopping of the war, despite knowing the cry for peace may fall on deaf ears. Some of them have even initiated more sustained intervention programs that would ultimately allow their beneficiaries to stand on their own.

Since defense of life is a universal responsibility, MinJourn and FREE have taken the task to share these findings to all sectors-including media, government, church, non-government organizations and even to the combatant forces. As our roles as journalists and citizens, we will make available details of the findings in the stories we will be individually submitting for publication in our respective local, national and international news organizations.

Since the war started, it seems that there has been orchestrated creation of a “gyera” mood among officials from both combatants and even with the aid of the media. Our six-day journey, however, has revealed that even those at the forefront of the war join the innocent civilians in their dream that the war would end soon. It is our hope an prayer that these stories, coming from Mindanao journalists themselves, will reflect a truthful and a Mindanaoan perspective of the almost four-month war.

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The fact-finding mission was prompted mainly by the “combat coverage” of the conflict by many journalists, mostly from national and international outfits that failed to focus on the “people aspect” and the root causes of the war. It was also in answer to a challenge posed by Archbishop Orlando Quevedo of Cotabato to the journalists to present Mindanao in correct and factual perspective.