“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the
world will know peace.” –Jimi Hendrix
Photo from www.sunstar.com.ph
A few months had passed after the Zamboanga City crisis in
Mindanao but souls are still not healed; homes are still not built; and lives are
still not at peace. What good does really a war bring if it costs lives and peace?
After the war, what happens next?
A symposium regarding the Zamboanga City crisis was held
last December 11, 2013 in the College of Mass Communication by its Graduate
Studies Department. The speaker of the event entitled: “Zamboanga City Crisis: Reconciling a Divided
Community” was Ms. Armina T. Rasul-Bernardo, president of the Philippine Center
for Islam and Democracy. She talked about how the Bangsamoro struggled during
the Marcos regime, how they lost their land and power even necessities for
living like electricity and water sources. She also discussed some background
of these people like the religion and culture of Islam which significantly
helped in understanding the situation from their perspective. The origin of the
problem that led to the war in Zamboanga was also explained in her talk.
When people experience hardships and sufferings, we tend to
cope and aspire for change, for a better life that we, undoubtedly, deserve. As
humans who have suffered a lot, who lived in the poorest slums, and were put in
the lowest kind of low, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) wanted to
gain back what were rightfully theirs and what they deserve as Filipinos and they
believed that the only way to achieve this is by a bloody war. And shame, this was
also what our government had to offer them back.
Ms. Rasul-Bernardo was right as she emphasized on her talk
that acceptance and unity are the key to rehabilitation of Zamboanga.
Communities must be rebuilt with unity and no discrimination. Our country may
be comprised of thousands of separate islands and hundreds of tribes with
different religions and culture but we should unite as Filipinos and accept
each other’s differences to be able to live in peace and harmony. Wars and
bloodshed are never the answer to a better life. Wars only create victims and
break bonds. Hunger for power won’t lead
us to anything good. Once we embrace our differences and accept one another as
brothers and sisters, and treat every being as equal, we are never too far from
this peace that we have always been talking about.
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