Martial Law Hits Mindanao

The daughter that Rohana Ali had cradled in her arms for almost three hours as she sat on a bus bench, was implacable. She has offered the toddler her breast milk but she refused. Water, the toddler refused. Chocolates, she again refused, shooing the pack of rainbow-colored round bits in her mother's hand. She continued to whine.

Is she sick? Could a bum stomach be ailing her? I offered a possible explanation, and gave her my reporter's notebook. Here, use this to fan her head. She might have been uncomfortable in the heat of afternoon sun and the dust of the snail-paced, bumper-to-bumper traffic, I thought.

By the moment she felt the cool breeze from the sheaf of papers fanned over her face, she stopped crying and slept soundly.

She has been behaving like this for days now, Rohana told me. A lot of children are behaving like her in my village, she added. She comes from Pualas in Buadiposo-Buntong, Lanao del Sur, 16 kilometers west of Marawi. She told me she had left her village before 5 a.m., traveled in a rented cab to the outpost town of Malabang, then took another public van to Kauswagan then to Iligan City where she rode this bus to Cagayan de Oro. It would take her and her brood 346 kilometers to complete the journey.

A few minutes ago, we were strangers to each other but we were seatmates on a bus detained for almost three hours now at a military checkpoint in Molugan, El Salvador City. We exchanged smiles and offers of food; she, boiled quail eggs and I, steamed peanuts; We both declined each other's gifts, but later, we learned each other's names.

In normal days, we could just be 15 minutes away from the bus terminal in Cagayan de Oro City. But these are far from normal days as President Rodrigo Duterte had declared Martial Law over the 27 provinces of Mindanao on May 23, 2017. That's around two weeks ago, and herculean efforts have been exerted to make military rule benign, benevolent and beneficial, and yet peaceful resistance had been persistent and unquelled throughout the country.

Barely 12 hours hours before President Duterte declared martial law while he was in Moscow, Russia, the Islamic City of Marawi, about 3 hours away by car from my hometown of Cagayan de Oro, was besieged by armed men whom the government brand Islamic extremists and terrorists, and affiliated with the global ISIS.

The armed conflict spiraled to include the entire city of 200,000, and already more than 100 are dead, and evacuees or internally displaced persons (IDPs) number around 222,000 while around 2,000 civilians are still trapped in the besieged city.

Rohana are among those who live in lakeside towns adjacent to Marawi who had decided to join the exodus away from their homelands. The decision is a forethought. ''We might be around 16 kilometers away from Marawi but when the jets drop the bombs, the ground shakes and the all the kids crouch under the beds and tables,'' she said. Some of the bombs missed their targets and were dropped in villages like hers, far from their projected trajectory.

She also noted that her neighborhood had gone unusually quiet in the past week. ''Everyone is gone, and if we stayed, we would go hungry. Even if you have money, you can no longer buy anything from anywhere anymore,'' she added.

She usually comes to visit her parents in Cagayan de Oro via Marawi, a route that would take her around four hours, but now the roundabout way, 350 kilometers, through Malabang had taken almost 11 hours, a third of which were spent stagnant at checkpoints, where passengers are asked to alight from the bus and show their identification cards and soldiers carrying rifles poke around the cargo, and stare at men perhaps for telltale signs of terrorist ''facial signatures''.

''My children are afraid of the sounds of planes and helicopters. You cannot see them around when the planes come in the morning. They cannot take a look at the soldiers and their guns. They have forgotten to play, and so I decided to leave with them to join my parents,'' Rohana said. Her parents sell various goods at a public market in Cagayan de Oro.

Most of the Maranaos, natives of Lanao del Sur, sought refuge among their kin instead of in evacuation centers. As of June 2, 190,000 of them are home-based. Rohana are among those who are not from Marawi but still had cautiously opted to evacuate.

While more than a hundred thousand IDPs are in Iligan City, an hour and 15 minutes away north of Marawi, about 10,000 of them have spilled over to Misamis Oriental, most of them sought shelter among relatives. My own hometown, Cagayan de Oro is host to about a thousand families.

But the family of Pepito and Ryhaina Ramos broke away from family and kin when 27 of individuals in tow, all relatives, they decided to come to Laguindingan, and asked to rent the four rooms of a boarding house a stone's throw away from the Laguindingan International Airport. The room used to be rented by stranded plane passengers on delayed flights but the owner readily accepted the 29 evacuees displaced by the conflict in Marawi.

''We arrived in Iligan city and all spaces in our relative's place were taken and so were the evacuation centers. We cannot sleep standing on our feet so we decided to try out this place,'' said Ryhaina. She said they lived in Luksa Datu, close to the town center of Banggulo, which had become the ground zero of skirmishes in the past15 days.

Both her husband and she work at the bus terminal, selling food and travel goods like towels,shawls and sunglasses, but had immediately left for home when they heard gunfire at the edge of town.

''All night I heard gunfire coming nearer and nearer, and I promised we'd leave as soon as the sun rises,because I might die out of fear rather than because of bullets.

''My youngest girl still cowers when she hears the sound of planes, which is often as we are very near the airport. I have to assure her repeatedly that the planes do not hold bombs, that they fly to carry people to and from Manila. I told her that someday we will ride on one to Manila,'' she said.

''But I do not regret having left, despite the hardships. I cannot imagine my boys, four of them and their playmates and relatives, being recruited to join the attackers. I heard they were recruiting young boys and would kill those who refused to go with them. And my girls, I cannot imagine them getting assaulted and raped by the soldiers who had been permitted by the president to harm women.''

She must have heard the news about President Duterte's speech in which he said he would take responsibility for the acts of the soldiers as they battle the attackers, including if they rape three women. His pronouncements had been assailed by many,including Chelsea Clinton. The patriarchal leader had hit back by saying he was not joking but only sarcastic. And yet, the common people like Ryhaina and me take him seriously.

On the day I came to visit, for lunch a week after their evacuation, Ryhaina and her family each had a plate of rice wet by ample broth of salted malunggay and alogbati leaves, foraged from the nearby hills. Each mound of rice was topped with a clump of the green leaves. Because they only had three plastic plates, they took turns in having their meals.

I was told that previously, they had some dried fish, instant noodles and eggs that were given to them together with a sack of white rice by the village officials a week ago. Some officials from the national government had come to note their profiles and they were expecting food packs as rations in a few days.

The boys Rafik and Waiky would not eat the boiled leaves and placed the green-bluish clods at the edge of the plate. The girls shared some lemon lollipops among themselves after the meal. They asked for forgiveness as they made me realize that Ramadan has started four days ago, but they were not fasting as required by their Islamic faith.

''Allah is kind, He understands our situation, we cannot let the kids go hungry. But we are eating only twice a day to conserve our food,'' Pepito said.

Today, I had come to visit the Ramoses and the other members of their clan, with a few goods enough for two meals for 30 persons, canned sardines and dried fish, sugar, coffee, cooking oil – something to tide them over until the government officials will come with the food rations. I also made sure to bring some hygiene kits-- including bath and laundry soap, deodorant, hair shampoo, toothbrush and toothpaste --- and sanitary pads and underpants for the women. I also gave them solar lamps, drinking mugs; pencils and crayons and writing pads.

But they were no longer at the boarding house they had rented near the international airport when I reached the town. Riana, the eldest child, had sent me an SMS, informing me that they have left early in the morning. And that she has my reporter's notebook. I had left it on a stool as I took my camera to take photos of them the previous week.

There were three versions why they left to find refuge elsewhere. One, one of the boys had thrown rocks at a neighboring house and the neighbors were angry at them. Two, rocks were thrown on their roofs at night and they took it to mean they were not welcomed in the neighborhood before. Three, no food had come and they were getting hungry.

They were already on their way back to Iligan or the town of Balo-i where they have relatives and they can get food rations from an evacuation center. But upon learning that I was on my way, they stopped by the roadside and waited for my bus to reach them in the town of Manticao, 50 kilometers from Laguindingan.

On my return trip on a non-aircon bus to Cagayan de Oro after seeing the Ramos clan, I sat beside Rohana, cradling her crying child in her arms.

In the first week of military rule on the island, my only reminders of its imposition were the drone of helicopters and planes from the nearby airbase of the Philippine Air Force. Someone told me that the nightly flight of helicopters carried wounded soldiers while the planes were on their air strike missions. And, yes, of course the endless updated reportage over the radio that took over episodes of my favorite soaps. And, the endless debates on the social network – for or against-- the declaration of martial law, and whether or not, those who are not from Mindanao deserve the right to have a say anything about the martial rule.

And yes, though I forgot to bring back the backpack containing the relief goods, I got back my reporter's notebook from Riana, and had offered it to fan Rohana's daughter, and she gave it back to me after she had scribbled her name on a page before we parted ways at the bus terminal in Cagayan de Oro. We reached the terminal a few minutes after the eleventh hour of Rohana's bus trip to safety.

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