Peace activists lead circumcision drive in Cotabato

COTABATO CITY — A multi-sector bloc supporting the Mindanao peace process facilitated the circumcision of 177 Muslim and Christian children from marginalized families during separate humanitarian missions in predominantly Moro areas over just three days.

Mayor Abdullah Abas of Tugunan in Cotabato province told reporters on Tuesday, June 3, that a total of 119 children in Barangay Bualan in their municipality were circumcised for free on Monday, June 2, by peace advocates, led by Bangsamoro Health Minister Kadil Sinolinding Jr., who is a physician-ophthalmologist, and their regional chief minister, Abdulrauf Macacua. 

Abas and Bualan’s community figurehead, Omar Piang, separately said that the group that carried out the humanitarian mission is comprised of medical practitioners from the Deseret Surgimed Hospital, from the Ministry of Health-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, and cause-oriented groups involved in public service projects in Moro communities in BARMM’s Special Geographic Area in Cotabato province.

The BARMM Special Geographic Area, most known by its acronym SGA, is comprised of 63 mostly underdeveloped Moro barangays in different towns in Cotabato province whose residents voted in favor of the inclusion of their ancestral domains in the core territory of the Bangsamoro region during a referendum in 2019.

Radio reports in Central Mindanao on Tuesday stated that, in addition to circumcising 119 schoolchildren from marginalized families in Bualan, the outreach mission’s facilitators also provided reading glasses to 80 villagers.

Moro community leaders were quoted in radio reports as saying that 27 elderly villagers from across Bualan, afflicted with cataract and pterygium, had been scheduled for treatment by Sinolinding, an eye surgeon trained in India and a concurrent member of BARMM’s 80-seat parliament. 

The villages under Tugunan, one of the eight newly created Bangsamoro towns in Cotabato, were scenes of clashes between government forces and Moro secessionist rebels in the past decades. 

Local executives in Kabacan town in Cotabato and Islamic missionaries said a total of 58 Muslim and Christian children were circumcised for free by the same group last Saturday, May 31, during an outreach activity at the extension office of Sinolinding in the municipality.