MANILA, Philippines — The Catholic bishops of the Philippines have called for a cease-fire in the establishing hostilities between separatists groups in the south of the country and government forces.

Two seminarians were killed in one attack, reported UCA News, an Asian Church news agency based in Thailand. They were students at Cor Jesu Seminary in nearby Dipolog on a summer pastoral program at Holy Cross parish in Siocon.

About 200 Moro Islamic Liberation Front fighters attacked the predominantly Christian town before dawn May 4. The armed men fired at the town's police force; some burned the commercial center and herded people into the town square. When military troops arrived from their base about six miles away, the perpetrators hurried away, taking with them several hostages, who were forced to carry wounded Moro Islamic Liberation Front soldiers. Twenty-two people were killed in the gun battle, eight of them civilians. At least 20 were wounded.

But the killings did not end there. A few hours after the attack on Siocon, Moro Islamic Liberation Front spokesman Eid Kabalu said in a radio interview, the group attacked a village in another province, in Maguindanao, where 11 soldiers were killed. And on May 6, Moro Islamic Liberation Front soldiers ambushed a military truck, killing three soldiers and five civilians who were riding inside the truck.

In a May 5 open letter to Philippine president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Moro Islamic Liberation Front chairman Hashim Salamat, the Philippine Bishops’ Conference condemned the killings of civilians the day before in Siocon, a town in Zamboanga del Norte province. The bishops appealed to the leaders “to order a cease-fire on all fronts and to direct the immediate resumption of peace negotiations” on the southern island of Mindanao.

Fight for Independence

Consisting of about 10,000 members, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front is a breakaway group from the Moro National Liberation Front, which advocates an independent Islamic state in the southern archipelago. When the Moro National Liberation Front signed a peace agreement in 1976 with the government, several disgruntled members joined former leader Hashim Salamat, who established the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Such a move by Muslim separatists did not sit well with the government, which has declared war on the Moro Islamic Liberation Front several times. The biggest “all-out war” against them was in 2000, when government forces overturned the group's major camps in Mindanao.

But the separatists did not leave the area. They have established themselves in one of the old camps in the Buliok complex, a cluster of villages near Pikit in Central Mindanao. Here, according to witnesses, including the parish priest of Pikit, Oblate of Mary Immaculate Father Roberto Layson, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front have lived peacefully side-by-side with the government forces — until Feb. 11.

Early that morning, as Muslims were about to say their prayers, government forces dropped mortars and bombs on their communities, disturbing the otherwise peaceful lives of Christians, Muslims and indigenous peoples. Thousands of families ran out of their homes toward the evacuation centers in Pikit.

The government was targeting the Moro Islamic Liberation Front enclave in the Buliok complex, where, according to the military, a notorious kidnap-for-ransom group had taken shelter. After a few days, the military captured the complex and declared victory over the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, but nothing was said about the kidnapping gang.

The displaced Moro Islamic Liberation Front forces continued their battle in the hope of regaining their position — and perhaps their pride. They spread out to nearby provinces, indulging in pocket skirmishes, targeting mainly military personnel.

Innocent Victims

The war in Mindanao has created a fight for survival among refugees living in improvised evacuation centers. At its peak, these refugees have reached 200,000 in four provinces, all displaced, scared and vulnerable to diseases. Although the government and several nongovernmental organizations have been giving them humanitarian aid, it is barely enough.

“Let us allow ourselves to be horrified by the killings and the suffering that goes on day after day in our own midst,” the bishops’ conference, headed by Archbishop Orlando Quevedo of Cotabato in Mindanao, wrote in the open letter. “Cease-fire in these circumstances is the demand of sheer logic, the demand of wisdom, the demand of compassion.” The losers in this unending war in Mindanao are the people, in particular the children, the bishops said.

“As spiritual leaders, our hearts bleed at the terrible toll that this war in Central and Southern Mindanao has inflicted on thousands upon thousands of families,” they said. If both parties, the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, continue this war, it would merely “inflict the ultimate damage — the severe impairing of the collective psyche and spirit of all the people who dwell here.”

President Arroyo demanded the Moro Islamic Liberation Front hand over those who attacked Siocon before peace talks resume.

“We will not compromise against terrorism,” she said. “We will pursue them wherever they breed.”

Sonny Evangelista writes from Manila, Philippines.