Welcome to the Phillipines !
August 26, 2008: The army has captured fifteen MILF camps in the south, and driven over 500 MILF fighters into the bush. The MILF high command says these gunmen, who drove over a quarter of a million Christian villagers from their homes, are "renegades", but refuses to help capture the two MILF commanders who led these raids. The MILF can't stand up to the army, but over the last three decades, they have demonstrated an ability to stage these hit-and-run raids. What's different now is that the military has more helicopters and warplanes available, causing the MILF to take higher losses from these raids. In the recent battles, the MILF raiders lost about 20 percent of their number when the government security forces retaliated. The MILF also lost their camps (where they live).
August 24, 2008: The government refused to resume peace talks with the MILF, and has sent over 6,000 soldiers and police to kill or capture the hundreds of MILF fighters who sought to drive Christians out of territory claimed by the MILF as Moslem.
Hmmmm, sounds like certain places in France.
August 23, 2008: The army is moving against MILF camps, and about 30 rebels have died in the last two days. Over a week of violence have left nearly 150 dead, two-thirds of them MILF, most of the rest Christian civilians. Over 200,000 Christians have been driven from their homes. The army is chasing the MILF gunmen back to their remote camps. The MILF has called for a resumption of peace talks.
Welcome to Hudabiya
August 21, 2008: The government has dropped the peace deal with the MILF, after months of intense negotiations. The major stumbling block was the transfer of Christian occupied territory to the control of the new autonomous Moslem region in the south. This was very unpopular with the hundreds of thousands of Christians involved and, to the politicians surprise, with most other Christians as well. The Moslems are a small minority (5 percent) in the Philippines, but they claim "ancestral control" over a lot of territory in the south that has long been occupied by Christians.
August 20, 2008: Retreating MILF gunmen took 63 human shields, but released them later. At least three dozen Christians died in several days of MILF raids, and over 40,000 Christian civilians fled. The MILF condemned the attacks, blaming two renegade MILF commanders (known as Commander Bravo and Commander Kato) who were lashing out at the refusal of the government to turn over Christian occupied territory to Moslem control.
August 18, 2008: Several hundred MILF gunmen attacked Christian towns in the south, killing 28 civilians and three security men. These raids were for spreading terror, as well as looting. The army responded within 24 hours, and chased the MILF gunmen away.
August 17, 2008: Two bombs were found and disabled in the south. One was aimed at a Christian (anti-MILF) politician, and the other in a movie theater. Two other bombs did go off, in low-budget hotels, wounding a few people.
August 16, 2008: In the last week, Moslem violence against Christians in the south has left nine dead and over 150,000 people driven from their homes. Moslem militias (the MILF) are trying to take control of territory they claim as "traditionally Moslem." The army has driven the Moslem gunmen back, for the moment.
My wife's family were among those 1/4 million.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, that's quite a MILF. She doesn't look like a Filipina Muslima to me, though.
;-)
You know, you look at this littany of stories from there, Indonesia, Thailand, an otherwise paradise like the Maldives, India, Kashmir, on and on, and it's just so easy to forget these are real people who way of life, if not lives have been ruined.
ReplyDeleteAND FOR WHAT?
The 'madman' ?
Yes, it is. That's why I talk about my wife's family's experiences.
ReplyDeleteAnd, my friend Romik. He's Armenian. His family fled the Turkish mass-murder of the Armenians in 1917.
They landed in Persia.
In 1980, they escaped the Iranian monsters, and landed penniless (though they had been rich in Persia) in Paris and SoCal.
Now, his family here in SoCal is wealthy, but they are having to pool their money to bring their relatives over here from Paris, because of guess who?
I have another friend, a Lebanese Christian, whose family escaped the Islamic monsters in Lebanon. Now, he is running the entire media account for a major corporation here.
ReplyDeleteHe says to me, "You're brave for what you do."
And, I say, "No, I'm just stupid. I never lived under it, so I do what I do out of ignorance" (there's a quote for my enemies to use on me).
Then there was a family friend from when I was a kid. His name was Sarkis Takesian. He was a professor and he wrote a book on the Armenian genocide. He lost a lot of family in that horror.
ReplyDeleteAnd then, there's another family friend (who shall remain nameless, though he recently passed away). He was an Engineer. His company sent him over to Morocco to work out a deal and the Islamic monsters running the government business there KIDNAPPED HIM.
ReplyDeleteHis wife had to appeal to our Congressman for quite awhile (over a year) before anyone took any action.
Shortly after he finally was released and returned to the U.S., his wife contracted MS (which apparently can birth in an immune system compromised by stress - I've also seen it in Holocaust survivors I have known.)
And then there was the Ethiopian woman I met in a park one time. She looked happy, so I asked her, how long have you lived here? Why did you come to America?
ReplyDeleteAnd, she told me, because the Muslims were offering the Christians MONEY TO CONVERT.
AND, IF THEY DID NOT CONVERT, THEY WERE IN DANGER OF BEING KILLED.
My friend Terry lost half her family in the Holocaust.
ReplyDeleteAnother friend Rivka, lost half her family in the Holocaust.
And, then there was my friend Qui who suffered in the midst of the genocide that went on in South Viet Nam after we pulled out. I will never forget the look of horror on his face as he described the Americans abandoning he and his friends who had all fought along side US.
And, it just goes on and on.
I have known many more than my share of people like this. I wonder if the average person knows this many people who have been effected by genocide. Or, is it somehow God put those people in my life and gave me ears to hear?
I don't know.