Seguis on evacuee situation: "their suffering has to end"

by Froilan Gallardo/MindaNews

DATU PIANG, Maguindanao (MindaNews/06 June) – Government peace panel chair Rafael Seguis found the living conditions at the evacuation center in Datu Gumbay Piang Elementary School so deplorable Thursday, he opted to turn and walk away.

Seguis instead went to the Catholic church in this predominantly Muslim town, where parish priest Fr. Eduardo Vasquez, OMI, briefed him on the situation of the predominantly Muslim evacuees.

Later, Seguis told MindaNews he was appalled by the squalid conditions the evacuees were forced to undergo as fighting resumed here following the collapse of the peace talks between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in August last year.

"Kalooy kaayo. (It's a pity). We cannot allow this situation to continue. Their suffering has to end," Seguis, also Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, said as he sat down for the briefing.

"Kulang ang sanitation, puno kaayo ang eskwelahan sa evacuees nga na apektuhan ang klase (The sanitation is poor. The school is so packed with evacuees that classes have been affected. I am appalled with what I saw," he said.

Seguis arrived Thursday to see first hand the evacuation centers in Datu Piang town where aid workers told him that recent fighting has been happening almost every night in the town and neighboring areas, forcing villagers to flee. As of his visit, the number of evacuees was 5,513 families or 27,565 individuals.

“The number decreased last March but it increased again when the fighting heightened in May,” Vasquez told Seguis.

Seguis earlier met with Sultan Kudarat officials led by Vice Gov. Donato Ligo and told them that the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) will resume talks “at the soonest” to end the problem of evacuees.

He said both sides will have to agree to tackle the issue to renew the mandate of the International Monitoring Team and the Ad Hoc Joint Action Group (AHJAG) and the International Monitoring Team (IMT) which were scuttled after hostilities broke out last year.

Seguis also assured Ligo and other Sultan Kudarat officials that government will exercise transparency and will consult all stakeholders that would be affected by the peace talks.

He said he is confident that any new agreement made by both sides will be acceptable this time unlike the ill-fated Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain which received stiff opposition from local government officials last year.

"I cannot tell you when the peace talks will start but this is the only way to stop the IDP (internally displaced persons) problem," Seguis said.

For their part, Ligo said they will not oppose any new agreement so long as the government makes it public before it is implemented. (Froilan Gallardo/MindaNews)

Source: http://www.mindanews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6476&Itemid=190