We could no longer wait for our regular golf mate, Attorney Danao, to complete our foursome flight, so we decided to tee off without him. Everyone thought it was unusual for him, a golf aficionado, to be late. The foggy and chilly dawn shrouding the Mindanao State University (MSU) campus’ grassy ground that was converted into a mini golf course cast gloom on us, as well as a premonition that something bad had happened. When we reached hole No. 2 we were met by a group of heavily armed young men who politely told us to go home.
We were not alarmed because armed men are a common sight in our place. I went back to my car and on my way home I heard over the radio that the rebels had forcibly taken over the radio station and, repeatedly invoking the name of Allah Subhanaho wataallah, declared the start of the Marawi rebellion. The date was Oct. 21, 1972, exactly a month after the declaration of martial law. They continuously broadcast the litany of crimes, the injustice, the neglect and discrimination allegedly committed by the government against Moros and urged everyone to join the jihad. I recognized two of my political science students taking turns airing the grievances of the Bangsamoro.
Thus began the horrors and nightmares that traumatized and haunt us to this day.
In the afternoon of the same day we learned that our golf mate, Attorney Danao, who offered mostly pro bono legal services to the locals (there weren’t many of us Muslim law practitioners then), and a prominent doctor and owner of the only private hospital in Marawi extending mostly humanitarian services, had both been mercilessly executed by the mujahideen for no other reason than that they were leaders of the Christian community there. Even the Christian ambulant vendors of fish, vegetables and ice cream who diurnally traveled from Iligan to Marawi were not spared.
There was panic among our Christian friends. Physicians Oscar Fudallan and Benito Acosta and other Christian residents of Marawi, including our boyhood playmates, sought refuge in our residential compound. The chief of police defected to the rebels’ side. Mayor Omar Dianalan, now deceased, and his handful of policemen tried—vainly—to restore order in the city while the rebels paraded in the streets with their firearms.
The courts, schools, offices and stores were closed for weeks. Arson and plunder were committed. My two-door commercial apartment was razed. There was heavy fighting in the nearby Amai Pakpak military camp. Its commanding officer, Colonel Marohombsar and his soldiers, although outnumbered, gallantly fought the rebels. The bridge along the national highway at the boundary town of Pantar, which connects Marawi to the north, was bombed, cutting the possibility of reinforcements for government forces. There was mass evacuation of the city residents. I brought my family to the lakeside town of Wato—my birthplace—on board a small motorized banca because the highway was closed.
Marawi was in total chaos.
A few days later, government troops liberated the city from the rebels’ control. I brought my family back to Marawi, only to be arrested later on the trumped-up charge of rebellion. I was detained in isolation and incognito because according to the arresting officer, a member of the Presidential Security Guard, I was No. 1 in the OB (order of battle) of the military.
I was interrogated nonstop, even late in the night, for about a week. No one, not even members of my family, could visit me. I was subjected to a lie detector test and confronted with documents and pictures showing that I had participated in protest rallies and marches while serving as president of the Muslim Students Association of the Philippines way back in my student days at the University of the Philippines, and organized and led the demonstration against President Ferdinand Marcos when he visited MSU at Marawi.
I was not physically abused, but the mental torture was excruciating. I had to bear the discomfort and humiliation of wearing and sleeping in the same clothes for days on end and deprived of amenities like soap and toothbrush.
If not for the intervention of the strongman governor Ali Dimaporo, since deceased, I would have been taken to Camp Crame in Quezon City for trial in a military court and prolonged incarceration.
Elsewhere, skirmishes between the rebels and government troops intensified. My cousin, Al Haj Nasser Plawan, who was the mayor of the town of Pualas, his wife, my first cousin who was Pualas chief of police, and their police escorts—all on board a van—were mowed down by the military while they were passing through an Army checkpoint in the town of Bacolod, allegedly on the mistaken belief that they were rebels. There are other episodes of violence still vivid in my mind, but limited space prevents me from narrating them.
I personally felt and suffered the agonies and cruelties of the so-called “Moro war.” Believe me, it is ugly and scary. It left physical and emotional scars on my being. I swore then that I would fight any move that would bring back those horrors.
Now the fate of the draft Bangsamoro Basic Law hangs in the balance because of the unfortunate incident in Mamasapano, Maguindanao. Poor Moros, our hope for a Darul Islam (Land of Peace) has dimmed. What had seemed close to reality may just be a dream now, as the BBL goes through the juggernaut of Congress, the demagogues, the political opportunists, and the antipeace advocates masquerading as patriots.
We hear the beating of war drums in Morolandia.
But we continue to hope, to look for the rainbow, to chase the Holy Grail.
Macabangkit B. Lanto (amb_mac_lanto@yahoo.com) completed his postgraduate studies in New York University as a Fulbright fellow. He is a former assemblyman and speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Autonomous Region 12, as well as a former congressman, ambassador to Egypt and Sudan, undersecretary of tourism, and undersecretary of justice.