In a statement, the MPC titled “Stop the Food Blockade,” the MPC said: “Nearly a year since military operations were launched against two field commanders of the MoroIslamic Liberation Front (MILF), the commanders are still on the loose and the civiliansare suffering the brunt of war: children, pregnant women, teachers, students, the civilian population in Maguindanao”The government, since August last year, has been running after so-called “lawless MILF”Commanders Ameril Umbra Kato is Abdulrahman Macapaar, alias Commander Bravo,and one Commander Mercury who are both operating in two Lanao provinces, and,Wahid Tundok, also in Maguindanao.“For more than ten months now, these internally displaced persons (IDPs) -- theevacuees or “bakwits” as they have come to be known – are still in cramped evacuationcenters and government buildings and schoolhouses, waiting for the time when they canreturn to their homes and resume their interrupted lives,” the MPC statement said.Fr. Vasquez said that his sources from the military already advised him to “be prepared” because the war may escalate “since this (war) already has the blessings of the higher ups. They told me we can no longer stop this, Father because the order came from upthere.”The MPC statement said “the war has instead become so vicious and soldiers who aresupposed to be running against renegade MILF commanders for allegedly attackingcivilians are now committing the very same atrocities that renegade commandersallegedly perpetuate.”At a coordination meeting of humanitarian agencies and representatives of the evacueesin Cotabato City last Thursday, it was reported that the military has blocked a truck-loadof rice intended for the evacuees last May 27. On May 5, 11 truckloads of relief goods of the International Committee on the Red Cross were also blocked at a military checkpoint.“The military refuses to acknowledge it is food blockade. But it is food blockade,nonetheless, when food intended for evacuees are held at checkpoints, the MPC statementsaid as it condemned “this practice of blocking humanitarian assistance to the evacuees”emphasizing that “justice delayed is justice denied, food delayed is food denied as well.And food denied could, as we all know, help save starving bakwits from preventabledeaths.”The MPC statement also called on civil society and church organizations, includinginternational humanitarian agencies, “to stand up and assert the independence of relief assistance as a matter of right for the IDPs. Our silence on this regard can be construedas our acquiescence to military's control of relief supplies to promote their militaryobjective.”
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