ARMM checking reports of executions by militants
May 28, 2017 | 6:15am
LANAO DEL SUR, Philippines — Tension in Marawi City has worsened due to reported incidents of summary executions of evacuees by Maute and Abu Sayyaf terrorists, officials said Sunday.
A retired public school principal and a councilor in a nearby town in Lanao del Sur corroborated on Sunday the sighting by crews of foreign and local television networks of bodies along a thoroughfare in Marawi City.
“Obviously, they are trying to sow dissension among Muslims and Christians. We are opposed to such felonious acts. We are not at war with Christians,” the retired education official told reporters.
The bodies of the victims were marked “munafiq,” which means hypocrite in Arabic, according to witnesses.
Myrna Jocelyn Henry, a communication staff of the Humanitarian Emergency Assistance and Response Team (HEART) of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman has ordered an inquiry into the reported execution of the eight people whose remains were found Sunday near a bridge over a shallow creek in Marawi City that Maute and Abu Sayyaf gunmen occupied early on.
HEART workers are also validating information relayed by evacuees purporting that the victims were workers from the Visayas.
Officials of the Police Regional Office-ARMM now helping oversee government clearing operations in Marawi City said they also received reports that the victims' employers tried to prevent the gunmen from taking them, but failed as they, too, were threatened with harm.
The Regional Darul Ifta' of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao issued a fatwa, or ruling, in 2015 that "terrorism and mischief cannot be accepted as synonyms for Jihad or one of struggle’s methods because our religion commands us to be compassionate to all beings in the land."
The council said that "Islam cannot approve criminal and terrorist practices, because attacking innocent people, robbing their money unjustly taking their infallible lives, diffusion terror and fear in the hearts of the faithful persons is forbidden in Islam or in our Islamic law."
Marawi residents aid each other
HEART's Henry also said on Sunday that Marawi residents have facilitated the safe relocation of more than a hundred Christians to safer areas in the past four days.
“The ARMM government is thankful to these Muslim Marawi residents for helping save the lives of non-Muslims. The HEART has facilitated the return of some of them to their respective provinces,” she said.
Henry said they are also validating the reported rescue by a Muslim state prosecutor of 42 Christians from the campus of a school gunmen set fire to on Friday night.
The prosecutor reportedly gave sanctuary to the 42 Christians in a tall building somewhere in Marawi City and relocated them out in batches.
“We don’t have complete details on how the reported rescue was done. Just the same, we are grateful for the big help. The HEART is ready to extend rehabilitation support to those 42 people,” Henry said.
“The HEART is validating all of these reports. The concern of the HEART is not just extending relief services to evacuees but also to relocate Muslim and Christian residents away from the barangays where there are on-going encounters,” Henry said.
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