Officials find new Lanao del Sur armed group ridiculous

LANAO DEL SUR --- Officials on Thursday branded as propaganda stunt the emergence this week of a band of gunmen demanding an end to hostilities in Marawi City.The gunmen, who looked like bandits in their covered faces, introduced their group as the Meranaw Victims Movement on camera in an apparently scripted gathering filmed for circulation via social media.Evacuees from Marawi City told reporters Thursday that they are convinced the small group was merely flaunting their demand for authorities to let them return to their abandoned homes where conditions could be better than in squalid evacuation centers.There are cause-oriented blocs that have long been urging for an end to government airstrikes in Marawi City to enable internally-displaced people to salvage what are left in their houses, many already flattened by bombs. I hope they are not trying to shame our elected leaders for failing to prevent the May 23 outbreak of hostilities in Marawi City. It seems there was politics in their stunt, said a ranking public school official in Marawi City.Key government health workers who saw the video of the gunmen on Facebook were quick to conclude that it was a four-pronged ploy meant to ventilate the sentiments of evacuees, assail local leaders, compel the Moro Islamic Liberation Front to help fight the Maute group and prevent a possible takeover by authorities of large swaths of military reservations in Marawi City occupied by thousands of claimants who are now IDPs.A Muslim physician helping attend to thousands of evacuees confined in different evacuation sites in Lanao del Sur said on Thursday that the group sounded as if inciting public hatred towards President Rodrigo Duterte. Some of their demands, if in a position to demand, are legitimate while some are counter-productive. That’s all I can say, said the medical practitioner.The MVM has called on Maute terrorists to set free all of their remaining hostages and leave Marawi city immediately.The group, however, surprisingly did not condemn the Islamic State-Inspired Maute terrorists for their siege of Marawi City on May 23, sparking hostilities that have since dragged on. The group is dedicated to help in fighting for the rights of the Bangsa Meranaw whose dignity was trampled upon because of this crisis, it said in a Facebook post early this week.It also cautioned public officials against embezzling of state funds earmarked for relief and rehabilitation programs for evacuees from Marawi City. It is a ridiculous group trying to steal the show, said a public works engineer involved in various projects in Lanao del Sur.Chief Supt. Reuben Theodore Sindac, director of the Regional Police Office-Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said Thursday that they are now verifying the background of the people behind the appearance of the MVM with the help of civilian informants in Marawi City.Sindac said he has directed the chief of the Marawi City police, Superintendent Ebra Moxsir, an Islamic theologian, to enlist the help of religious leaders in the on-going probe. Our efforts are being done in coordination with our military counterparts there in Marawi City and in Lanao del Sur, Sindac said.Local executives in Lanao del Sur, whose capital is Marawi City, have promised to help the PRO-ARMM investigate on the organizational intricacies of the group. We believe this is not a threat group. We Meranaws are touted as enterprising, wise people. We don’t believe it’s capable of fighting the Maute terror group or the government, one of the officials said on Thursday morning.The video of the MVM displaying force in a barangay outside of Marawi City reminded residents of central Mindanao on how the Indigenous People’s Federal Army surfaced in South Upi town in Maguindanao in 2001.Armed men wearing shirts marked IPFA appeared to reporters in a cornfield in South Upi, called for the resumption then of the government’s suspended peace talks with the MILF and urged for the involvement of the Lumad communities in negotiations.There was deadlock then in the government and the MILF’s peace talks that started on January 7, 1997 as a consequence of the bloody southern pacification campaign in 2000 by President Joseph Estrada that resulted in the fall of the front’s major enclaves in Mindanao.The IPFA was led by its main organizer, Roger Adamat, an ethnic Teduray, who later confessed to his having initiated the show to entice Malacañang’s attention to resume with its talks with the MILF to put a negotiated closure to the nagging Moro issue hounding Mindanao since the late 1960s.The group disbanded right after it got the publicity Adamat longed for.