![]() Return to normal routines in war-torn city Troops and suspected Maute Group remnants fired at each other near Marawi in June, but a presidential spokesperson said martial law would stop the rebels from expanding.Ī suspected suicide bomber, possibly from abroad, killed 11 people including himself July 31 by blowing up a van on a Sulu Sea island near Mindanao, local media reported. This year, troops used airstrikes to kill 44 Mindanao rebels during an attack in March. Rebel-linked violence has killed about 120,000 in Mindanao since the 1960s and even after apparent military victories, insurgencies have tended to resurface. Muslim insurgents on Mindanao believe the Philippine Catholic majority has taken an unfair share of resources despite five centuries of Muslim settlement. “Martial law is very helpful because it is an instrument for controlling various elements, and it is very good for the meantime,” he said. ![]() ![]() Martial law is widely accepted for now as a tool for squelching rebels as well as the illegal drug trade, said Habib Macaayong, president of the Mindanao State University system based in Marawi. In Davao, the second largest city in the Philippines, the mayor once declared a lockdown blocking all entries into town. ![]() Checkpoints near Iligan, a city that absorbed war refugees from Marawi because of its proximity, make almost everyone get out of their cars for inspection. Rural military and police outposts established under martial law are freer now to track rebel movement by stopping and interrogating suspects.Īuthorities at road checkpoints in the 800,000-population city of Zamboanga, for example, have required that anyone entering the city to show some identification. Cities in turn empty after dark because of the curfews. Martial law in Mindanao has restricted the movement of armed rebels, including possible Islamic State operatives, largely by keeping them out of the cities. The law then called for curfews, bans on public assembly and military arrests of people who were suspected of plotting against the government. Some locals remembered the harsher measures taken by authoritarian former-president Ferdinand Marcos in 1972. Troops declared victory over the Maute Group in October after more than 1,100 people had died in the fighting. When Duterte declared martial law in 2017 to help quash the Islamic State-inspired Maute Group in Marawi, some Filipinos worried it would erase their personal freedoms by letting police or military units do as they pleased without due process. My relatives who live in Mindanao are very happy with this.” “So, I think it also calmed down the nerves of the city residents. “They couldn’t just enter the cities without being frisked at the borders by the military, and they needed martial law for that,” he said. “That (law) could slow down the plans of the terrorists or even small wildcat operations,” he said. The law covers all of Mindanao, home to Marawi and about one-fifth of the Philippine population and a hotbed for armed insurgency since the 1960s.Ī network of road checkpoints outside major cities, permission for authorities to frisk people without warrants and evening-to-morning curfews have helped troops throttle further violence by Muslim rebels without routine harassment of common people, said Eduardo Araral, a Mindanao native and associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s public policy school. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte extended martial law through 2018 after declaring it in May 2017 so troops and national police could fight rebels in Marawi, a mountainous, largely Muslim city in the south. A second year of martial law in parts of the Philippines is squelching any comeback by violent Muslim insurgents after a civil war, despite earlier fears that the order would also curb common people’s freedoms, witnesses say.
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