BANGSAMORO NEWS UPDATES

COTABATO CITY– The Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), through its food-for-work program, has distributed close to 3,000 sacks of rice and containers of palmoline oil to farmers in South Upi town in Maguindanao province. South Upi is one of the 10 towns in Maguindanao severely hit by drought.The program is implemented by the region’s humanitarian and emergency action response team in partnership with the United Nations World Food Programme (UN-WFP).ARMM Executive Secretary Atty. Laisa Alamia and UN-WFP Program Officer Michael Argonza led the food distribution on Tuesday, June 28.

CAMP DARAPANAN, Maguindanao ---- The estranged Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) on Wednesday agreed to push forward a common roadmap for peace in the country’s troubled south.The MILF’s figurehead, Hadji Murad Ebrahim, and Muslimin Sema, who is chairman of the largest of three factions in the MNLF, signed in Camp Darapanan in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao a joint communiqué binding their groups to cooperate in harmonizing” their separate peace overtures with Malacañang.Camp Darapanan in northeast of Sultan Kudarat town is the MILF’s main encl

COTABATO CITY – Two suspects in the roadside bombing in Midsayap, North Cotabato, last week have been arrested by soldiers manning a checkpoint in a remote village in that townon Sunday.Supt. Tom Tuzon, Midsayap town police chief, identified the suspects as Lahmudin Ampuan, 21, and Adzal Bobby Dansulaw, 56, both residents of the Datu Abdullah Sangki town in Maguindanao. The two were turned over by the Army to the Midsayap policeon Sunday, for the filing of charges.

DAVAO CITY — Former Mayor Ibrahim Datu Jhong” Mangudadatu of Buluan, Maguindanao has called on Moro leaders to stand firm on issues affecting Muslim Mindanao, principally the peace process and on unification.Mangudadatu said the country’s Muslim leaders should first collectively present solutions to problems which they wanted addressed by national government, under President-elect Rodrigo Duterte.This developed as the Mangudadatus extended reconciliatory arms to the family of Hadji Ali Midtimbang, the former mayor of Talayan, Maguindanao, who ran against incumbent Governor Esmael Toto” Ma

BULUAN, Maguindanao-- A lawyer will put to a litmus test” the Philippine cybercrime law by prosecuting fictitious Facebook users whom he said maligned Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu online.Mangudadatu’s counsel, Israelito Torreon, on Friday said the case will involve about 1,300 respondents.

DATU SAUDI, Maguindanao --- The pink town” in Maguindanao will have a water supply facility within the next 18 months in yet another infrastructure project complementing the Southern Mindanao peace process.
The recipient-municipality, Datu Saudi, is located in the second district of Maguindanao, dotted with buildings and road signs painted pink, the favorite color of its mayor, Samsudin Dimaukom.

COTABATO CITY -- The Indonesian government will facilitate the schooling in Ache of 30 local prospective Islamic theology students via a scholarship tie-up with the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Imam Alzad Sattar, regional undersecretary for Islamic studies of the Department of Education-ARMM, on Monday said the scholarship agreement was forged last Friday by the regional government, the Indonesian Embassy and the Yayasan Sukma School in the Ache.

COTABATO CITY -– Officials of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao branded as un-Islamic” the decapitation of Canadian tourist Robert Hall in Sulu by his Abu Sayyaf captors, something they did not expect to happen during the Ramadhan.The regional vice governor of ARMM, Haroun Al-Rashid Lucman, on Tuesday said the gunmen who beheaded Hall, kidnapped while in an island resort in Davao City last year, are virtually non-Muslims. Islam is against the killing of innocent people and mutilation of cadavers.

COTABATO CITY – Regional Gov. Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim
Mindanao today condemned the brutal killing of Robert Hall, a Canadian national
held hostage by extremist Abu Sayyaf Group since September last year.

Hataman was
deeply saddened by the incident and called on all Muslims to let us stand
together as we build and rebuild our faith in the midst of those who try to
tear us apart.”

COTABATO CITY - Exactlya month after the national elections, re-elected Regional Governor Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) said it’s time to heal and mend fences of political divide.Speaking in a simulcast weekend ARMM radio program, Hataman said the region’s constituents have been past divisive politics of mudslinging, and that it was time to move on for a continuing change.Hataman said ARMM’s majority Moro constituents needed genuine delivery of government services, having been into decades of displacement due to armed conflict.