PEACETALK: The Zamboanga Siege of 2013, 10 Years Hence: Continuing Questions of Justice and Peace (1)

1st of 5 parts

NAGA CITY (MindaNews / 11 Sept)—Ten years hence the September 9 to 28, 2013 Zamboanga Siege, the questions of justice and peace arising from and around it continue without both aspirations being fully or even satisfactorily achieved. On top of this, history of the Mindanao conflict seems to keep repeating itself, as if the key lessons haven’t been learned. It is a good time, if not overdue, for all concerned to take stock.

It will be recalled that the Zamboanga Siege featured armed hostilities between the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) main group of Chairman Nurulaji “Nur” P. Misuari, that was referred to in that Siege as the “Misuari Faction Rebel (MFR),” on one hand, and the Philippine government security forces consisting mainly of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) supported by the Philippine National Police (PNP), on the other hand. MNLF contingents from Sulu and Basilan entered Zamboanga City seaborne onto several coastal barangays where other contingents from Zamboanga Sibugay and in the city itself were already earlier in place. The MNLF purportedly intended to march to the City Hall, raise the MNLF flag there and declare the independence of the “Bangsamoro Republik.”

According to one detailed chronology of events, on the eve of that intended march, Zamboanga police arrested six MNLF armed elements positioned in one coastal barangay, Rio Hondo. In the early morning of the day itself Sept. 9 of the intended march, the first exchange of gunfire between the MNLF and government troops took place in another coastal barangay, Sta. Catalina, after entering through coastal barangay Mariki, resulting in the death of two soldiers and an undetermined number of rebels. The MNLF launched their attack, firing on civilians and taking on civilian hostages to use as human shields as they moved towards Sta. Catalina and still another coastal barangay, Sta. Barbara, where they established a stronghold. They took over tall buildings in the area where their snipers had vantage points. Within a few hours, the sounds of mortar shelling, rapid gunfire from different firearm types, explosions from various types of explosives, wailing sirens of ambulances and fire trucks woke up the city. The Siege was on and would go on for nearly three weeks until the military defeat and retreat of the MNLF in the face of superior surrounding and constricting government security forces on land, sea and air.  

The MNLF taking of civilian hostages and using them as human shields was one main pattern or feature of the Zamboanga Siege. Another was the repeated burning of houses in the five affected coastal barangays collectively dubbed as “Ground Zero.” The house burnings, on top of the armed hostilities, aggravated the internal displacement of resident Zamboangueños. By various accounts, 138 rebels, 19 soldiers and 9 civilians were killed, 167 soldiers and 57 civilians were wounded, 200 hostages either escaped or were rescued, and 278 rebels were detained. There were 22,196 families with 118,819 persons internally displaced who had to be temporarily sheltered in the city’s sports complex and 36 other evacuation centers and an unknown number of homes of relatives and friends. An estimated 9,709 residential and commercial establishments were burned or destroyed, affecting 20,094 families. Total damages to vital sectors of the City were estimated at around Php 3.2 billion and total losses at Php 2.9 billion. On top of all these, “the negative psychological effects of the Siege linger among Zamboangueños, changing their lives forever.” What started as the Zamboanga Siege had well become a “Zamboanga Crisis,” one that carried the “broader scope and deeper consequences of the event” impacting on local Muslim-Christian community relations, in that “wedges have been driven deeper” with the danger of “a future of mutual inter-religious aversion.” At the same time, this crisis, if handled and addressed well, could be an opportunity for Levanta Zamboanga (Arise Zamboanga), not only for its infrastructure and economy but also for its peace and social cohesion.

Criminal Justice and Accountability

At the height of the Zamboanga Siege, Zamboangueños, especially of the Christian majority, were calling for justice and accountability, including an “all-out prosecution,” of the MNLF for having initiated it. “There was a massive cry for the blood of the MNLF.” This understandable sentiment of social pressure was a definite factor in tipping the balance in favor of the military option for resolving the Siege. Muslim-Christian animosity was such that local Muslims who were not MNLF tended to be suspected as such by the government security forces and even the local Christian populace. And so, at the end of the Siege, the Zamboanga City Prosecution Office filed three criminal cases for Rebellion and two counts of War Crimes against Chairman Misuari, his Zamboanga Siege ground commander Ustadz Habier (also known as Khabir) Malik, and more than 200 other accused MNLF elements before the Regional Trial Court (RTC) of Zamboanga City.

The Rebellion charge under Article 134 of the Revised Penal Code (RPC) alleged at its core that the accused Chairman Misuari et al. have “risen publicly and taken arms against the Republic of the Philippines… by then and there attempting to hoist the MNLF flag in front of the Zamboanga City Hall to signify their declaration of independence from, and for the purpose of removing from the allegiance to, the Philippine government or its laws part of its national territory the City of Zamboanga, specifically the barangays of Mariki, Rio Hondo, Sta. Barbara, Sta. Catalina, Kasanyangan, Talon-Talon and Mampang … and in connection therewith and in furtherance thereof, have then and there committed acts of murder, pillage, disorder, looting, arson and destruction of private and public properties.”

The first War Crime charge under Section 4(b) (1) and (3) of Republic Act No. 9851 (Philippine Act on Crimes Against International Humanitarian Law, Genocide and Other Crimes Against Humanity) alleged that the same accused, among others, “took non-combatant civilians as hostages, in particular, by rounding up more or less 300 persons, who were then held together as hostages and detained randomly in buildings and houses in said barangays… the same resulted in more or less twelve (12) total number of deaths and more or less seventy five (75) total number of serious injuries to innocent civilians.”

The second War Crime charge under Sec. 4(c)(1)(7) & (20) of the same R.A. 9851 alleged that the same accused, among others, “utilized their [the hostages] presence to render certain areas immune from military operations, that is, and more particularly by employing the same as human shields at the forefronts of Lustre Drive, Sta. Barbara and Martha Drive, Sta. Catalina … and further, accused in attacking dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives deliberately burned said structures which resulted in a conflagration of more or less 9,732 houses and buildings, public and private, causing damage in the estimated costs of Php 201,023,000.00.”

The MNLF was said to have deliberately burned houses during the Zamboanga Siege to cover (including from aerial surveillance) their withdrawals from the encounter sites and to effectively delay the offensive operations of government forces. Some interviewed evacuees however said that it was the Army who burned the houses or caused it by their mortar fire against the MNLF. This is also plausible in terms of deliberately flushing out the MNLF from strongholds, aside from the likely incendiary effect of various ground, naval and aerial explosive weapons superiorly employed by government forces against MNLF positions, even in what appear to be populated areas.

(SOLIMAN M. SANTOS JR. is a retired RTC Judge of Naga City, Camarines Sur, serving in the judiciary there from 2010 to 2022. He has an A.B. in History cum laude from U.P. in 1975, a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Nueva Caceres (UNC) in Naga City in 1982, and a Master of Laws from the University of Melbourne in 2000. He is a long-time human rights and international humanitarian lawyer; legislative consultant and legal scholar; peace advocate, researcher and writer; and author of a number of books, including on the Moro and Communist fronts of war and peace. Among his authored books are The Moro Islamic Challenge: Constitutional Rethinking for the Mindanao Peace Process published by UP Press in 2001; Judicial Activist: The Work of a Judge in the RTC of Naga City published by Central Books in 2023; and his latest, Tigaon 1969: Untold Stories of the CPP-NPA, KM and SDK published by Ateneo Press in 2023.)