Editorial: The truth is, there are war victims

THE holding of journalists who were on their way to an evacuation center in Central Mindanao over some feeble excuse as security and coordination underlines a disturbing reality: that there are war victims that government doesn't want to be seen.

This becomes more disturbing because from official government statements, there is already peace in Mindanao and that the problem that remains is but the continued manhunt for two rebel leaders: Ameril Umbra Kato and Abdulraman Macapaar alias Kumander Bravo.

By reducing the problem to just two persons, government is keeping the people blind about the whole mess in all those evacuation centers that are now overflowing with families, barely able to fend for themselves, deprived of the ability to feed themselves.

All because government wants to paint a picture of peace. At what price? At the price of all those children who have to share one classroom for at least four classes and grade levels, at the price of all those families who will never live in real peace because of sheer absence of psychosocial services necessary for trauma victims, at the price of all those women who are seen by the military as rebel supporters and stand-by rebel forces.

Unrest is a historical reality in Mindanao, what's keeping this unrest brewing is government trying to paint over the real manifestations of this unrest just to make it appear to the clueless Philippine resident and even more clueless foreign tourist that there is no problem. All at the expense of the hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons whose existence are blocked from the view of a regular passer-by.

The attempt to stop the group of journalists from visiting the evacuation camps and producing a real picture of the problem is but a manifestation of this.

Now, the military is trying to make the journalists appear like they were there to sabotage government, dropping insinuations that their trip was funded by rebel sources.

Evacuee families who are stand-by rebel forces, journalists who are funded by rebel sources, and the denial that there are still hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Central Mindanao. What else can government come up with in its continued denial of a problem that gnaws at its very existence?

With a government in denial, the responsibility is now upon all of us who happen to have access to information and images in those areas. Let us all tell the truth as we see it and not allow the vested interest of the ruling few to blind our country to the realities that are happening on the ground that are made worse by their sheer negligence and paranoia.

Source: http://www.sunstar.com.ph/davao/editorial-truth-there-are-war-victims