Squatters encroach on Philippine peace deal

Cotabato City (Philippines), Apr 23: Businessman Antonio Santos Jr is having sleepless nights.

His family's property in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao is being taken over by groups of Muslims displaced by armed conflict.

From one small thatched hut over a year ago, several houses have sprouted like mushrooms in the property that Santos's mother inherited from her parents.

''I don't know where these people are coming from,'' Santos told Reuters. ''Every time I pass by the area, I notice new structures rising. It's really very frustrating because we really don't know how to stop them.'' Teeming with natural beauty, exotic fruit and valuable minerals, Mindanao has been stricken by nearly 40 years of communist fighting and an Islamic insurgency aimed at creating a Muslim homeland in the largely Catholic country.

The Islamic conflict has killed more than 120,000 people and left around 350,000 homeless but long-running peace talks between Mindanao's largest Muslim guerrilla group and the government are in their final stages and both sides are hopeful of an informal agreement.

Officials in Cotabato City, however, are worried that a peace deal this year between Manila and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which would include provisions on ancestral rights, could encourage more squatters and stir up violence.

EXPLOSIVE ISSUE

''The ancestral domain issue is very sensitive,'' said Frances Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi, the attorney-general of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, an area originally created under former dictator Ferdinand Marcos for Muslims in the south.

''How do you handle ancestral rights claims on lands that had been individually titled without heating up old conflicts or creating new potential bloody feuds? ''I hope the government will be very careful in handling this potentially explosive issue.'' Santos sought help from Muslim community leaders, the local police and even the courts, but has been unsuccessful in trying to evict the squatters who were claiming the land as part of an ancestral domain.

His case was one of hundreds crowding the local courts in Cotabato City, the business hub of Muslim Mindanao, a region which has resisted external authority since the Spaniards colonised the Philippines in the 16th century.

Sayadi said criminal syndicates had been using Muslim ancestral rights to take over idle lands.

One gang was using a land title written in Spanish to claim about 54,000 hectares (135,000 acres) of property in Cotabato City, including areas where the city hall and a public school stand.

She said another group filed claims over a hill now occupied by the national police as part of ancestral lands by a non-Muslim tribal group called ''Tiruray''. The city government has no exact figure for the number of land disputes but local officials said city courts were inundated with cases. Most of the complainants were rich Muslim and Christian landowners and ethnic Chinese traders.

Squatting is a common problem in urban centres across the Philippines, particularly in rebel-controlled areas in Mindanao, which are among the poorest in the country despite hosting potentially rich seams of minerals such as gold.

''The city may be likened to a giant magnet that has been attracting these displaced people,'' said an official at the Cotabato City planning office.

''All the available jobs are here. All the opportunities to make a living are readily available here. This is part of the social problems associated with rapid urbanisation.'' A U.N. report in 2005 estimated that around 350,000 Muslims were displaced by conflict in Mindanao, especially after former President Joseph Estrada declared an all-out war on insurgents in 2000 and intense fighting in 2003.

RIGHTS, NOT TENURE

Mohaqher Iqbal, the head of the MILF negotiating panel, was surprised to hear squatting problems in the city were being linked to a possible deal with the government.

''We don't know of any ancestral claim in Cotabato City,'' he said, adding the MILF's concept of ancestral homeland for Muslims was not based on land tenure.

He said the MILF was only demanding the government recognise that Mindanao and the southwesterly Sulu archipelago and western islands of Palawan were historically part of the ancestral lands of Muslims.

Both sides were hopeful of overcoming remaining obstacles on issues of ancestral domain and have said an informal peace deal could pave the way for a final agreement by September.

But the MILF was also practical, realising that Muslims have even become a minority within their own homeland, added Iqbal, a member of the MILF central committee who has written books on Muslims' struggle for self-determination in the south.

''We're fighting to restore our rights,'' he said. ''We will recognise due process. There are many justifiable means to restore our rights.''

REUTERS