NATURE’S AND MAN’S WRATH: A Similitude or Sharp Contrast

By: Mike G. Kulat

A short recollection of events will tell us of a man’s unleashed fury in Maguindanao province and its peripheries started in August 7, 2008 when now presidential aspirant and National Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro and Department of Interior and Local Government Secretary Ronaldo Puno issued the “Ultimatum” for the surrender of alleged three “rogue” MILF commanders.

A day after the ultimatum, the two Secretaries ordered full military operations which they called “surgical operations” in around eleven municipalities of Maguindanao. The operation utilizing full might of the military such as artillery weapons, war tanks, war planes, Helicopter gunships and ground forces went on relentlessly for about a year-long period without distinction to combatants and non-combatants.

In a nutshell, the last accumulated report of the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) showed that more than 703, 000 individuals of the mostly Moro populace were displaced or internally displaced persons (IDPs) and experienced a year-long untold miseries. The armed conflict too inflicted lost of lives from either sickness, caught in cross-fires and for various causes to more than 500 civilian lives. It also left more than 3,000 houses razed to the ground and damages to billions of crops, properties and infrastructures in war-torn areas. In brief, this was once hastily described by Under-Secretary and now GRP Panel Chair Rafael Seguis as “deplorable” condition of IDPs in Datu Piang, Maguindanao. Or “the biggest new displacement in the world” said the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) in its April 2009 report launched May 1 in New York.

In all this undignified condition of civilians, we can only obviously recollect the leading role of the World Food Program (WFP), International Committee of the Red-Cross (ICRC) and the Community and Family Service International (CFSI) who are among the humanitarian bodies that able to sustain in assisting the IDPs from the war start until this days. Of course there are some government agencies and local humanitarian groups who also maximized their resources and efforts in helping appease the awful condition of the IDPs but then they did only as much, maybe due to limited resources too.

In contrast or resemblance, we saw nature unleashed its own rage and fury spearheaded by typhoons Secretary “Ondoy” and Secretary “Peping”. We similarly saw fears and devastation to the lives of the people of Metro Manila and surrounding areas. The latest figure released by media is that the affected individuals by the two typhoons are more than 3,000,000. It also inflicts a roughly estimated more than 300 individual lives and undetermined number of sick, missing and many sufferings from various causes. We believed this will still increase when validations of casualties and damages to lives and properties will come to a closure.

We witness heartbreaking cases of people being carried by raging flood-currents on top of their houses by water hyacinths as well as sudden destruction of billions of properties and crops in many provinces and cities of Luzon. We may never end in telling stories of nature’s rage and its effect to the lives of mankind. All of the above have been done in a matter of week.

In retrospect, although there are some resemblances in the two catastrophes, it can be proven that man’s wrath cannot equal the nature’s wrath. Man was able to sustain evacuation of a little less than a million for a year-long (August 7 -9, 2008 – July 2009) military ‘surgical operation’ in Maguindanao areas. On the other hand, nature’s fury (Ondoy and Peping) able to displaced more than 3,000,000 at the span of one week (September 27 – October 4, 2009).

In contrast, we appreciate and envy the Filipino people for their humanitarian efforts, volunteerism, and patriotic deeds and solidarity in an endeavor to help their fellow humans who are sufferings. A glaring sample of this heroic act, is one TV station foundation was able to generate around 47 - 50 Million pesos donations in a matter of less than 24 hour period. And from then on we witnessed and hear the outpouring of donations both from individual, groups or companies aside from the full force of the government in appeasing the condition of the victims.

These are scenarios never been seen or heard during the year-long sufferings of Moro IDPs in Maguindanao province. In humanitarian perspectives, is there any distinction or disparity between Filipino as human being or a Moro as human being, too? If then why there is discrimination in treatment in a comparable situation?