Twelve years, no justice: The civilian cost of armed conflict in Mindanao’s forgotten crisis

Figure A road lined by coconut trees in Datu Saudi Ampatuan, Maguindanao

They came in the morning, swooping down the house.

Like rain in July, rockets crashed just after dawn on the village of Gawang, Maguindanao, pummeling the earth and Hapun Singh’s home.

Singh and his family were sleeping when they heard the first bazooka fire. Then came a second. And a third. The sounds moved closer and closer. Soon, people were fleeing their homes.

Cycles of violence

In the marshes of Maguindanao, conflict is part of life. 

War scars the province. Fighting between rebels and the military has persisted for decades, rotating between its villages. Sometimes it’s intermittent, sometimes in full bursts. Residents say it’s mostly the specifics that change: where the next bullets land, or who’s fighting who. 

Back in 2008, when the Singh house was struck, the military was chasing Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels in the municipality of Datu Saudi Ampatuan, where Gawang lies. Peace talks between the two parties were rocky and soldiers had set camp in the barangay, triggering hostilities between the military and the rebel group. Before this, it was the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in the 1970s, and now the MILF splinter, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF). 

And as for the residents who live there?  They adapt.

“When they started firing bazookas, people started running,” Singh said. 

Fleeing to safety

When the barrage started that morning, the Singhs and their neighbors fled to the boats. Roughly a hundred meters from the old Singh home is a marsh that leads towards an exit point in Kalumamis, a barangay in the neighboring municipality of Guindulungan. 

From Kalumamis, they would go to the evacuation center in another barangay, Dalican, where civilians like them were safe from the strike.

Crammed in boats, families and neighbors rowed for their lives as projectiles slashed through the air, their canoes side by side rockets that splashed on the water. Two of their neighbors died crossing the marsh that day, Singh said. Both victims were senior citizens who were startled by the attack. 

“We could see the bazookas crashing in the water just meters from us,” he added. 

The rowers paddled nonstop. It would take two hours before they reached the exit point.

“There were seven of us, two rowers each per boat… You don’t feel exhaustion when you are scared.”

Figure Hapun Singh, 74, once lived in Gawang, Datu Saudi Ampatuan before his family members died and his house was damaged due to armed conflict in 2008

Short-term refuge

It was terror though, not exhaustion, that eventually caught up with the family.

At the Kalumamis exit, the Singhs borrowed money from a relative and rode a motorcycle to the evacuation center. They arrived with nothing but the clothes on their backs, but after hours of travel, the family could finally breathe easy– or so they thought.

Then, as soon as they arrived at the center, Sapia, Hapun’s wife, dropped dead.

They say it was the shock from the bazookas that killed Sapia Tumagantan: the rushing and the booming and the sight of rockets splashing onto the water. Her feet had barely warmed the floor when she died at the center.

“I asked her what was wrong with her. She said the fear wouldn’t leave her, then she suddenly fell,” Singh said.

After her death, the Singhs held a kanduli for the family matriarch. The ceremonial feast, practiced on multiple days, is tradition among Muslims in Mindanao to commemorate the dead. The kanduli’s cost drove the family to debt.

Sapia’s death hit their youngest son, Butukan the hardest. The boy, only 16, was traumatized by the incident and was never quite the same.

With no mother, no house, and no money, the family would never live in Gawang again.

“We didn’t want to return after that. Back then, there were bazookas and firefight even at night. Sometimes it would last until 3a.m.,” he added. Hardly a month after Sapia’s death, tragedy struck the family a second time.

Sudden disappearance

The last time Hapun saw Butukan was in Gawang on a Friday morning. The two were visiting their old lot and Butukan had gone to a mosque in nearby Barangay Kitango to pray. They would do this every now and then—check on their coconut trees, and then leave before nightfall. Before Butukan left, the elder Singh tried to warn him that the military was in the area, to no effect.

“Ever since his mother died, he became traumatized and mentally ill. I told him not to go because there were soldiers, but he still left,” Hapun said.

The rest of what happened to his son that day, Hapun only knows from accounts or bystanders.

According to a neighbor, Butukan was on his way back to Gawang and was planning to take a shortcut through the marsh. She informed him there were soldiers nearby but Butukan still proceeded to his canoe. The neighbor claimed she saw soldiers take the teenager. This was the last they saw the boy.

Hapun searched everywhere for Butukan. When they checked the marsh, the boy’s canoe was still at the shore. He never made it to the boat. Hapun also checked the military camp near their barangay but was told his son wasn’t there. The senior citizen reached as far as Cotabato City and General Santos searching for his son but Butukan was nowhere in sight.

Figure Part of a school in Barangay Kitango, Datu Saudi Ampatuan doubles as an evacuation center for disaster and conflict victims

The civilian cost of war

In 2008, armed conflict in Mindanao killed at least 104 and displaced 610,000 civilians in just two months, according to a report by Amnesty International. Given the difficulty of monitoring casualties in remote villages, actual deaths could be more, it adds. In this long and protracted struggle, civilians are caught in the fighting between rebel groups and the government.

The morning of the rocket strike, no warning was given to residents of Gawang. The same year, the Supreme court struck down the Memorandum of Agreement on the Muslim Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD), a precursor to the Bangsamoro Organic Law, as unconstitutional, giving rise to increased skirmishes in the region and tension in the peace process.

Sometimes violent clan wars also erupt between families. Entangled in the consequences of war and conflict, civilians like the Singhs are displaced, harassed, or even killed in its aftermath.

Residents, however, are reluctant to report these incidents, fearing high costs, danger, or simply not knowing how to proceed with reports. Others see no value in securing death certificates for their loved ones.

More than a decade later, Hapun has received no reparations for the death of his wife or his son’s disappearance. They do not even have death certificates. The one time he sought help for the documents, he says he lost ₱3,000 and got nothing in return.

“We no longer talk about it because nothing will happen. If you report it or ask for help, sometimes they even make you pay” he said when asked if he talks to other victims about the incident.

“I couldn’t think anymore; I was just on standby.”

Reinforcing hopes for peace

With the transition to the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), there is renewed hope of peace in Mindanao for civilians like Hapun and their families. One neighbor is optimistic that the landmark Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) will finally bring stability to the region.

“There’s been a big difference since the transition to BARMM began. Before this, there weren’t any projects but since BARMM we’ve been seeing new ones come into place,” he said.

But part and parcel of this recovery is justice for its victims, whether from recent events or decades past. In December 2020, volunteers in Datu Saudi Ampatuan and Shariff Aguak filed a draft ordinance that proposed financial compensation for families of victims who died in natural and human-induced disasters. The ordinance was drafted and filed by volunteers who had also lost relatives to conflict, assisted by the non-government organization Initiatives for Dialogue and Empowerment Through Alternative Legal Services, Inc. (IDEALS).

“I felt both excited and nervous [to present the ordinance]. Perhaps it was because I was facing so many important people and was unsure of what the results would be. But I’m also excited that the ordinance may be enacted,” said Sarah Macabangen, who presented the draft policy to regional and local officials last November.

If passed, the ordinance will grant financial assistance of P10,000 to families of each “qualified deceased civilian victim” of disaster in the municipality. A small amount but a step in bringing closure and acknowledging the impact of conflict on decades of Maguindanaons.

Figure Community Champions discuss their draft ordinances on MDM at the Regional Conversation on MDM last November 2020

A fractured home

Today, Hapun Singh, moves back and forth his other children’s houses. At 74, he’s too old to live alone. Besides, he says, seeing his other children keeps him busy.

Troops remain a sore spot for the old man. “When I see soldiers, I leave. I don’t want to see the people who took my son,” he said. If he hadn’t gone missing, Butukan would have been 28 this year. Had things panned out otherwise, the young man might even be married by now, he imagines.

Save for occasional scuffles, Gawang is quieter these days– but few have returned to their part of the barangay.

Hapun has no plans of returning either; the place is no longer home.

Still, he remembers his son and wife with fondness. Twelve years after their loss, these memories are all that’s left of the life the family once lived.

“I remember my wife was very caring… She was a happy person and liked to read the Qur-an. Butukan was tall, he’d just graduated high school and he liked to farm and sing,” Hapun recalled.

“When I lost my wife and child, I also lost my home,” he said.