After our trip, several students and I stayed behind to travel on our own for a couple of days before the semester started back home. As I relaxed on beautiful sandy beaches and visited a “natural wonder” on Palawan Island, I tried to escape from all the information and sad stories I had heard during the previous two weeks. I did not want to think about the conflict anymore. I wanted to be like many of the other tourists, ignorant about the country and enjoy only its beautiful scenery and charming people. Someone said to us on the ground, “after this you get to go home, we have to stay behind and have to live here”; touché! I had no idea that the day I hopped on my plane back to the US, that a botched military operation to capture some high profile rebels left close to 70 people dead and a community terrorized. It is amazing how fragile some situations are. One day you can be talking about peace and all the things you are doing to keeps its momentum, and the next day violence breaks out causing thousands to once again flee their villages.
The feeling I had when I left the island was positive; I believed things were going to get better. As I sit here reading the news I feel sad with a powerful sense of hopelessness about the situation. I keep thinking of all the people we met who had so much hope, and had worked so hard to keep the peace. This news article I read earlier this evening is claiming that Malaysia is assisting the Philippine government in preparing for the eruption of war and surges of displaced people to the southern region of Mindanao. It further predicted that if Bangsamoro Basic Law is not passed in June; there will be full-out war. Others contend that the president of the Philippines along with the prime minster of the Malaysia, are using scare tactics as a last ditch efforts to pass the BBL. The only information I have access to regarding the situation is from the press, and who knows what biases they have. I vividly recall talking with a worker from a peace organization that made the statement “if the BBL does not pass there will be fighting, if it does pass there still will be fighting”.
