Southerners laud Malacañang's amnesty for MILF, MNLF members

COTABATO CITY — Southerners on Monday expressed appreciation to two proclamations of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. granting amnesty to members of two Moro fronts tagged in crimes in pursuit of revolutionary goals.

The president last week  issued Proclamation 405 and Proclamation 406 granting amnesty to members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front, respectively, who are facing criminal cases as a consequence of their involvement in bloody secessionist uprisings.

Gerry Salapuddin, administrator of the Southern Philippines Development Authority, said on Monday that the two proclamations “augurs well” with cross-section efforts to foster lasting peace in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Salapuddin, who hails from Tuburan town in BARMM’s Basilan province, was thrice seriously wounded in clashes with soldiers while he was chairman of the MNLF’s revolutionary committee in the island province in the 1970s.

“Armed conflicts are devastating, painful, saddening, sickening. We’ve learned from it that the best way to build peace, based on Mindanao settings, is reconciliation and unity in spreading it everywhere in all of its regions,” Salapuddin said.

At least 300 members of the MILF and the MNLF, mostly residents of BARMM, have pending criminal cases related to rebellion in different courts in Mindanao, according to officials of different peace-advocacy organizations in the region and human rights lawyers helping them for free.

BARMM covers six provinces and three cities where there are government-recognized enclaves of the MILF and the MNLF, whose leaders are now cooperating in overseeing the regional government, either as members of its 80-seat parliament or as heads of various ministries.

BARMM Local Government Minister Naguib Sinarimbo, spokesperson of the regional government, said that they were elated after the president issued the two proclamations that can hasten his peace overtures with the MILF and the MNLF.

“That is a good development, something that can hasten our efforts  to make BARMM a truly peaceful and progressive region. We are thankful to the President,” Sinarimbo said.

BARMM’s labor minister,