Alyanna Angelina M. Cabral Prof.

Soriano-Dionisio

2012-65902 PS 153

Last March 3, 1-4 pm at the CAS Little Theater, I attended a forum titled
“Dissecting the Mamasapano incident and the War in Mindanao: Impact of Man-made
Disasters on Women and Children".

The first speaker, Prof. Bobby Tuazon, discussed the Mamasapano incident in
the context of US intervention. The highlight of Prof. Tuazon’s talk was the truth about
the Mamasapano incident which states that the real command of the Oplan Exodus
came from the US, as part of its counter-terrorism operations. In fact, US established
military facilities and deployed American forces in Camp Navarro in Zamboanga with
the help of the Philippine Government. Lastly, according to him, the bigger victim in this
incident is the truth and understanding this truth is necessary for finding out who should
be accountable for this incident.

The second speaker, Veronica Gregorio, discussed the impacts of war on

women and children. An interesting highlight of this talk is about how the tools in war
are sexualized. In this, guns and missiles symbolizes men’s penis while the targets for
these armaments symbolizes women’s vagina—seeing men as powerful and
dominating over weak women. This further leads to the feminization of the enemies in
war. Lastly, she emphasized that the wars today are not an issue of gender or religion,
but an issue of the whole nation since these are created by US imperialism.

The last speaker, Haneefa Macapado, presented the Mamasapano incident in

the perspective of the Moro community. She emphasized that the desire of the Moro
community to have an autonomous government is not just because of their cultural and
religious identities, but also of socio-economic reasons. It is also important to highlight
from her talk that because of the Mamasapano incident, the peace process between
GPH and MILF is now unlikely to continue since the sincerity of the GPH is now
questioned by the Moro community. The sincerity of the GPH to the peace process will
only be proven only if GPH is able to hold President Aquino, Purisima, Napeñas, and
the US accountable for this Mamasapano incident.