The photograph taken by an Inquirer correspondent of
children playing “luksong tinik (jumping over thorns)” in an evacuation centre
in Zamboanga City, south Philippines, published on Wednesday’s issue, may have
brought a rueful smile to many readers
It shows that children will find a way to play even in the
most trying circumstances. But that photograph, featuring a young girl in
mid-jump at its centre, has inconvenience, discomfort, suffering, and pain
written all over it.
There are the makeshift clotheslines, their temporary nature
suggested by the angle at which they had been set up. There are the make-do
tents in the background, their variety of colour proof of emergency.
There are the women doing chores; there are the plastic
bags; there is the cooking pot—all in an open area enclosed by a wire-link
fence. The children themselves seem to be absorbed in their play, except for
one little boy, in blue, stealing a glance at the photographer.
All told, the adventurist incursion by the Nur Misuari-led
faction of the Moro National Liberation Front and the unrelenting government
response have forced so many people—almost 110,000, according to the Department
of Social Welfare and Development—to evacuate their homes. That is a
surprisingly large number.
Zamboanga is not only a picturesque and historic city; it is
also a major, indeed highly urbanised, one. According to census data, the
population of the city grew by a third between 2000 and 2010, from some 600,000
to more than 800,000. More than that number have been affected by Misuari’s
costly temper tantrum.
The siege, now on its 11th day, has taken an enormous toll
on the residents. The number of the dead has risen past 100, an unbearably high
total. Until Monday, many of the city’s establishments—banks, schools, offices
and so on—could not open for business. As of this writing the airport remains
off-limits except to military aircraft. And trade with Basilan and the Sulu
islands, reputed Misuari bailiwicks, has slowed (another of those ironic
consequences lost on the MNLF founder and former governor of the Autonomous
Region in Muslim Mindanao), when he and his men chose to march with their weapons
in Zamboanga.
But the impact on the residents is incalculable.
We do not doubt that the valiant citizens of Zamboanga will
pick up the pieces and rebuild their lives and parts of their city, once this
is all over. It is written in the history of Zamboanga hermosa, which lies on
the figurative border between Spanish conquest and Moro resistance, between
Christian culture and Islamic faith.
But in the meantime, they are undergoing a real test, a
crisis.
Hundreds had been taken hostage by the Misuari faction; most
have been released or have escaped, but it is believed that a number still
remain captive. Some of them will have stories of adventure to tell their
grandchildren, such as the young men taken from their boarding house who were
forced to cook for their abductors and the other hostages.
Many more will suffer from unspeakable trauma, of being
roped like cattle or used as human shields, for the rest of their lives.
Too, the stories that have come out in the last several days
about the travails of ordinary citizens have been almost as wrenching: a
two-year-old boy held hostage, forcing his parents working abroad to return
posthaste; residents who had just left an evacuation centre, forced by a fresh
outbreak of fighting to evacuate again; citizens who woke up day after day to
the sound of gunfire.
Fr. Joel Tabora, a Davao-based Jesuit, has for the last
several days been expressing his anguish and concern over the Zamboanga
situation on Twitter. Some of his tweets carry a simple refrain: “War is
cruel.”
It’s
a simple truth, masked sometimes by the natural inclination to seek someone to
blame, or to fixate on personalities, or to speculate about
what-might-have-beens or what-might-yet-be. Zamboanguenos are suffering
“desolation,” “appalling water and hygiene” conditions, “collateral evil,” and
so much more, because war is cruel. Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN, Manila |
Opinion | Thu, September 19 2013, 1:55 PM
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