Where can you find the soldiers in Datu Piang?

By: ROMY ELUSFA

DATU PIANG, Maguindanao - The soldiers here are everywhere – in mosques, school buildings or few meters away from school buildings, and houses of civilians.

From Crossing Salvo, the main road that connects the cities of Cotabato and Tacurong in Sultan Kudarat, to this interior town within the Liguasan Marsh, are more than 10 Army check points, some of them are less than a kilometer away from each other.

Along the some 20-kilometer stretch from Crossing Salvo to the town center here are two mosques that are occupied by soldiers who made the houses of worship as their camp.

“Aside from the fact that it (using houses of worship as camps) is prohibited under the International Humanitarian Law, Islam treats mosque as a sanctuary for peace.

Soldiers or combatants are not advancing peace but war, so they shouldn’t be camping inside mosques. They are destroying the sacredness of the mosques which essence of existence is peace,” said Jose Akmad, a Muslim religious leader who is also senior council member of the Mindanao Peoples Caucus (MPC).

Pastor Reu Montecillo, chairperson of MPC said: “That should not be allowed. The soldiers should be made aware that it is against the law to occupy mosques, churches or chapels.”

Along both sides of the stretched are ruins of houses razed and partially burned. Many abandoned houses were also occupied by soldiers.

The 54th Infantry Battalion of the 5th Infantry Division is stationed 25 meters away from the compound of the Datu Gumbay Elementary School and Datu Piang National High School. At the Army Camp were two 105 and one 155 howitzers which almost daily discharge huge bullets the soldiers described as “interdiction fires.”

From Monday to Friday last week, it was only on Friday evening that Bantay Ceasefire volunteers have not heard of howitzer firing from the 54th Infantry Battalion.

Noime Pua, a teacher at the Datu Gumbay Elementary School, in a dialogue among peace advocates and officials of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao last week, appealed for ARMM officials to help them effect the transfer of the Army detachment farther away from the campus.

Pua said: “Every time a howitzer fires, our pupils would go out of the classroom. Some will go home to the evacuation center. Others will be fetched by their parents. Those who would be left could no longer concentrate with our lessons.”

An official of the 54th IB knows that the 25-meter distance of their camp from the school was against the Rules on Engagement, yet, Capt. Joel Lucas, the operations officer of the unit, said they shouldn’t be blamed for the camp’s location because it has been there even before they were deployed here from Luzon.

Though it is “difficult,” it was possible to transfer the camp somewhere else, but Lucas said they need to carefully evaluate the new proposed camp site. “Wala kasing ibang magandang lugar,” he said while explaining that they could only transfer the detachment if the new site is strategic enough for them.

Citing the voluminous logistical requirements that hinder them from transferring their detachment, the Army official suggested, as an alternative, the transfer of the two schools, instead.

This developed as officials of the local government unit here have also called on the Moro Islamic Liberation front guerrillas “not to attack soldiers near populated places.”

Lucas suspected that in some harassment against their camps the attackers came from the evacuation centers.