The majority-Catholic Philippines told Muslim teachers Tuesday to remove their veils inside classrooms, in part to promote better relationships between teachers and pupils. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Armed Muslim clans in the strife-torn southern Philippines are holding 11 people, including several children captive, as part of a decades-long feud, the military said on Friday.
The tit-for-tat kidnappings are part of a battle for land between two clans that began 30 years ago on Basilan, a small, remote island dominated by Islamic militants and separatist rebels, said Colonel Rodrigo Gregorio.
The feud has previously led to exchanges of gunfire and claimed about 20 lives from both sides, according to Gregorio, the regional military spokesman.
“Hopefully, there won’t be any violence. The two sides are still talking,” he told AFP.
The latest hostilities began on Tuesday when three daughters of clan leader “Commander Hassan” were abducted by a rival family on Basilan, said Gregorio.
Hassan’s armed followers retaliated by abducting 12 members of the rival clan, including seven children on Thursday.
Gregorio said the local government and military were negotiating with both sides and had successfully obtained the release of four children.
The ages of the kidnapped children ranged from five months to 15 years, the military said. But it was not clear which of them were released.
They are still trying to get the two rivals to release the rest of the captives while preventing any new outbreak of fighting, Gregorio added.
Commander Hassan is a member of the Moro National Liberation Front, a former Muslim separatist rebel group, but the feud does not involve his organisation, the military said.
Muslim clans in the southern Philippines are well known for waging prolonged feuds, typically over land, political power or influence. They often use armed followers to attack each other.
Such feuds in the southern Philippines, which the country’s Muslim minority regard as their homeland, claimed more than 5,500 lives and displaced thousands between the 1930s to 2005, according to a study by the Asia Foundation.
During such feuds, the government including the military, typically tries to negotiate for peace between rival sides rather than move to apprehend the contending parties.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Malaysia‘s army chief says a soldier and three Filipino gunmen have been killed in the latest clash over a Philippine Muslim clan’s incursion into Borneo.
Security forces have waged several gunbattles since March 1 against about 200 Filipinos who began occupying a coastal village last month to revive a long-dormant territorial claim to Malaysia‘s eastern Sabah state in Borneo. Airstrikes and mortar attacks drove the Filipinos out of the village last week, but many are believed to be hiding in nearby palm oil plantations.
Armed forces chief Zulkifeli Zin said a firefight left one soldier and three Filipinos dead Tuesday morning.
Malaysian authorities have reported nearly 60 Filipino casualties and eight police deaths in Sabah this month. Authorities say the clansmen must surrender unconditionally and face prosecution.
Malaysia is reinforcing efforts to block armed Filipino intruders from escaping by sea or vanishing into Borneo’s population following deadly clashes that prompted the U.N. chief to urge both sides to seek a peaceful resolution.
The conflict has wreaked political havoc for both Malaysia and the neighboring Philippines, which spent weeks trying to dislodge nearly 200 members of an obscure Philippine Muslim clan who took over an entire Malaysian village to lay claim to a sprawling Borneo state they insist is theirs by royal birthright.
Malaysia mounted airstrikes and mortar attacks Monday against the clansmen, but most eluded capture in a coastal district brimming with palm oil plantations and forested hills.
Government and police officials said Wednesday they were tightening naval patrols and evacuating thousands of villagers away from danger.
Malaysia is sending hundreds of soldiers to a Borneo state to help neutralize armed Filipino intruders who’ve killed 8 policemen in the country’s bloodiest security emergency in years.
Nineteen Filipino gunmen have been slain since Friday in skirmishes that shocked Malaysians unaccustomed to such violence in their country, which borders restive southern provinces in the Philippines and Thailand.
The main group of intruders comprises nearly 200 members of a Philippine Muslim clan, some bearing rifles, who slipped past naval patrols last month, landed at a remote Malaysian coastal village and insisted the territory was theirs.
Public attention focused Monday on how to minimize casualties while apprehending the trespassers surrounded by security forces as well as an undetermined number of other armed Filipinos suspected to have encroached on two other districts.
At least seven people have been killed in a shootout between police and suspected Filipino intruders on Borneo island, Malaysia‘s police chief said Sunday.
The shooting Saturday night occurred 150 kilometers (90 miles) from another district in eastern Sabah state where 14 people were killed earlier after members of a Philippine Muslim royal clan occupied a village last month to claim the territory as their own.
National Police Chief Ismail Omar said that five policemen were killed in the ambush by unidentified gunmen in the coastal town of Semporna. Two of the attackers were killed, he said.
Malaysia‘s biggest security crisis in recent years began when about 200 Filipinos landed in Lahad Datu on Feb. 9, saying ownership documents from the late 1800s proved the territory was theirs. They rejected repeated calls from both the Malaysian and Philippine governments for them to leave Sabah, a short boat ride from the restive provinces in the southern Philippines.
On Friday, Malaysian authorities clashed with the clan members, leaving 12 Filipinos and two Malaysian police commandos dead.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Saturday that the government would offer “no compromise — either they surrender or face the consequences if they refuse.”
Police dropped leaflets by helicopter over the occupied village Saturday telling the Filipinos to give up, while the navy bolstered patrols in waters between Malaysia and the Philippines.
The Filipino group is led by a brother of Sultan Jamalul Kiram III of the southern Philippine province of Sulu.
The standoff elevated the Sabah territorial issue, a thorn in Philippine-Malaysian relations for decades, to a national security concern for both countries.
In Manila, Jamalul Kiram III told reporters that he was worried the violence in Sabah might spread because many Filipinos, especially followers of his sultanate in the southern Philippine, are upset by the killing of their compatriots in Lahad Datu.
His daughter, Jacel, who is a sultanate princess, called on Filipinos to stay calm but stressed the sultanate would never back down from its struggle to reclaim Sabah.
“This concerns honor above life,” she told reporters. “We will not retreat just like that, because we’re fighting for …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Malaysian security forces in Borneo surrounded armed intruders believed to be from the southern Philippines and sought to persuade them to leave peacefully Thursday, authorities said.
The standoff has sparked one of the biggest security scares in recent years in Malaysia‘s eastern Sabah state, which is less than an hour by speedboat from southern Philippine provinces that have long been wracked by a Muslim separatist insurgency.
The intruders landed in Sabah’s largely rural, coastal district of Lahad Datu on Tuesday following “troubles in the southern Philippines,” national police chief Ismail Omar said.
Prime Minister Najib Razak, who was visiting a separate part of Sabah on Thursday, said “the government is choosing to handle the issue through negotiation and to get the group to leave peacefully to prevent bloodshed,” The Star newspaper reported on its website.
Ismail earlier said the intruders had been ordered to surrender their weapons and that “the situation is under control and the public need not worry.”
Details from the remote area, about 500 kilometers (300 miles) from Sabah’s capital city, have been scarce. Authorities have not publicly disclosed the number of suspects or how they were armed, though Malaysia‘s national news agency, Bernama, cited unidentified police sources as saying that the intruders comprised more than 100 foreigners wearing military fatigues.
Speculation about the identity and motives of the intruders has included reports that they belong to Philippine Muslim guerrilla factions fleeing from recent violence there, but some officials have indicated they might be guards for a Muslim royal family in the southern Philippines who failed to inform Malaysian authorities that they were traveling to Sabah.
Security on Malaysia‘s sea border with the Philippines has been problematic for Sabah, where tens of thousands of Filipinos have tried to immigrate over the past few decades.
In 2000, southern Philippine gunmen slipped twice into Sabah and abducted people for ransom, including tourists from a diving resort.
One of the most recent kidnappings involved two Malaysians snatched from a plantation in Lahad Datu in November. They were believed to have been taken to the southern Philippines.
