Switzerland chairs panel on transitional justice

MANILA, Philippines – Switzerland is now fully involved in the Mindanao peace process as it chairs the Transitional Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) that will deal with past atrocities committed by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and Philippine government troops.

The TJRC, led by Mô Bleeker, special envoy of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, officially convened on the first day of the meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on Saturday.

The TJRC is part of the bodies and mechanisms of the Philippine government peace panel and the MILF that will implement normalization, including the decommissioning of MILF fighters.

The government peace panel and the MILF started discussing the decommissioning process, which is key to ending the insurgency in Mindanao and sealing a peace deal.

The two sides have appointed three foreign experts – from Brunei, Turkey and Norway – to join an independent body that will oversee the decommissioning process, together with four local experts yet to be nominated.

The TJRC will be the “Task Force for Dealing with the Past and the Prevention of Atrocities.” Cecilia Jimenez will represent the government with Ishak Mastura from the MILF to sit in the TJRC.

The Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) signed between the government and the MILF on March 27, 2014 provides, among others, a number of mechanisms within the framework of the “normalization process.”

One of the mechanisms is the TJRC. The panel is tasked to study and recommend the appropriate mechanisms to address legitimate grievances of the Bangsamoro people, historical injustices, and human rights violations and marginalization towards healing and reconciliation.

The TJRC is preparing to hold two events in early October in Cotabato City and in Manila to introduce the panel to the public and begin the process of consultations.

Under the CAB, a draft for the Bangsamoro Basic Law that will govern the proposed Bangsamoro region will be submitted to Congress before it would be ratified in a plebiscite to replace the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The draft BBL was submitted to Congress earlier this month.

Lawmakers said the Bangsamoro bill had bipartisan support and would be passed early next year, giving President Aquino time to set up an autonomous government before his term ends in mid-2016.

Infighting

Rep. Rodolfo Biazon said the BBL should include a provision that will help ensure the success of the ongoing normalization process involving MILF combatants.

Biazon, a member of the ad hoc panel deliberating the BBL, said the process of decommissioning MILF fighters will not be easy but everyone involved must help make it succeed.

He proposed the BBL should include a phrase on the implementation of a gun control mechanism in the new autonomous region in Mindanao that will be created by the BBL.

“Total disarmament cannot be incorporated in the law – that would be very, very difficult, you’re going to rob the government, the MILF, the people of Mindanao of the flexibility to implement disarmament in accordance with the existing situation on the ground, and you cannot define that by law,” Biazon told reporters.

He said cultural and economic factors in the new autonomous region will play heavily in the normalization process, adding it is very difficult to determine the actual number of firearms the MILF has in its inventory.

He said there are other large groups and sectors in Mindanao that bear arms and are not covered by the CAB.

They include the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), local politicians with private armies, and families involved in violent “ridos” or clan feuds.

There are also factions in the MILF involved in land disputes. – Paolo Romero, Jaime Laude