Peace advocates welcome IMT

By Mukhlis Mamengkog

Cotabato City/February 18 – The Civil Society Organizations warmly welcomed the International Monitoring Team (IMT) yesterday in a meeting held at the Pacific Heights Restaurant, this city, at 6:30 p. m. yesterday.

In his welcome message, Murshied Mascud, chairperson of the Kutawato Regional Management Committee of the Consortium of the Bangsamoro Civil Society, Inc. (CBCS) said that Mindanawans lost a lot when the IMT left Mindanao for almost two years.
Mascud added that the people of Mindanao are now very happy that the IMT is already back here.

“It is another milestone for all Mindanawans to have the IMT now back. We are so very lucky,” Mascud said.

“The IMT, because of its desire to help us, is now here sacrificing with us,” he also said.

“The Malaysians have ever since been very helpful to both the Filipino and the Bangsamoro people,” Mascud stressed.

“We express gladness and big satisfaction for having you, IMT, now in our homeland,” Fr. Angel Calvo, chairperson of the Mindanao Peaceweavers (MPW), the largest network of peace advocates in Mindanao, said.

Calvo said that the “coming back of the IMT is one of the signs of hope,” as he expressed his commitments to work with the IMT.

Atty. Mary Ann Arnado, secretary-general of the Mindnao Peoples Caucus (MPC), a triple-people’s organization that organized the Bantay Ceasefire (BC), and currently a member of the IMT, also welcomed the IMT.

Arnado said it has been a tradition of the MPC to welcome the IMT as the group also did it in 2004. She and her group are looking forward to meaningfully working with the IMT.
A law practitioner, Arnado expressed her group’s readiness to extend any assistance to the IMT for it to succeed in its mission for peace in Mindanao. She also disclosed that there are still many organizations that want to work with the IMT.

“I felt not only welcomed here but felt everybody wants sustainable and lasting peace,” said Lt. Gen. Datuk Raja Mohammed Affendi bin Raja Mohamed, Chief of Staff of the Malaysian Armed Forces Headquarters, in his message.

“We are maybe far from each other but we are not…, we left Mindanao but never in our hearts and prayers,” he added.

The General commended the great role and work of the non-government organizations (NGOs) in the search for peace, saying that in any process the NGOs should take a great part or they should be part of all processes.

“And the most important part of the process is that ‘there is talk’,” he told some 50 peace advocates from different organizations who have been very active in all peace processes in Mindanao especially in the ceasefire monitoring work.

Col. Dickson Hermoso, of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), said the presence of the NGOs and the IMT were among other secrets why the number of skirmishes dramatically went down in the past years.

Previously, the IMT’s mission was only to monitor the implementation of the ongoing Agreement on the General Cessation of Hostilities (AGCH) of 1997 and the Agreement on the Rehabilitation and Development of the Conflict Affected Areas in Mindanao.

The new mandate of the IMT now includes the Civilian Protection Component.