Content warning: This story contains graphic depictions of rape and violence. 

The setting is a sleepy seaside town in Mindanao. In Palimbang, Sultan Kudarat, a dilapidated building stands—or at least, is trying to. Bogged down by the weight of repressed memories and horror stories, this house of worship, a masjid called Tacbil, is a site of sheer terror for the community.

For most Filipinos, this is merely a run-down building, one not unlike the many others on the island. But for those brave enough to remember, history—the worst kind imaginable—was made here. 

On the morning of September 22, 1974—two years into Marcos’s Martial Law—naval ships docked in Palimbang. What transpired was nothing short of a living nightmare for the Moro community. 

Abo Malinog Bayao, one of the survivors interviewed by the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) last 2014 under the Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act, remembers it being the third day of Ramadan, the supposed holy month. They were fasting and praying, he recalled, when the soldiers arrived and began shelling the area with artillery. 

Shocked, confused, and afraid for their lives, the entire community attempted to flee to the mountains. An emissary from the military then went to them to negotiate and convinced them to return to the village. Believing him was a terrible mistake they all came to regret.

The men of age were tied up and brought to the Tacbil masjid where they once professed their faith daily. There, they supplicated for the last time, begging for release from the untenable suffering they had to endure at the hands of the soldiers.

For days, they were starved and made to drink urine-laced water. Then one day, five at a time, they were brought out and shot one by one. At the end of the ordeal, thousands of Moro men had been killed, their names lost to history, remembered only by those lucky enough to have escaped and survived.

In this story, even the survivors felt like a part of them died that day. In between sobs, a survivor who also participated in the CHR documentation narrated how she and the other women were raped by the soldiers. “In front of our husbands, our fathers, our sons,” she said. One woman, they remembered, slit her own throat with scissors after being brutalized by multiple men.

A bloody history

Perhaps the most blood-curdling thing about this story is that it was not an isolated incident. “Throughout Martial Law, and even before, countless massacres have been committed against the Moro people,” said UP Institute of Islamic Studies historian and assistant professor Darwin Absari.

A Moro who hails from the Tausug ethnic group, Absari is all too familiar with these blood-soaked pages of their history. “What happened during the Marcos years was a mere continuation and expansion of the programs from the Spanish, American, and Commonwealth regimes that sought to disenfranchise the Moro,” he explained. 

Never in the three centuries of Spanish colonial rule was Muslim Mindanao fully subjugated. Through sheer force, they resisted, held together by an unparalleled level of cohesion from having centuries of shared culture and history even before the Spanish conquest.

During the period of American rule, the Moros’ homeland was essentially sutured to the Philippine state. To facilitate the colonization of Mindanao, the American insular government enacted a trans-settlement policy that moved large swaths of Christian populations from Luzon and Visayas to Mindanao, forcefully displacing the indigenous Moro and Lumad communities already living there.

Rising tension between the Christian settlers and Mindanao’s original inhabitants led to numerous clashes between the two. Bit by bit, both sides became more violent, setting the stage for the wars to come.

Centuries of grievances against the Northern invaders fueled the Moros’ rage. All that was needed was the spark to ignite the flames. Then came Marcos.

Marcos, Moros, and Martial Law

In the northeastern tip of the island of Borneo was a hotly contested area. Once part of the Sultanate of Brunei, Sabah was given to the Sulu Sultan in the 17th century as a gift. But when Borneo started decolonizing in 1946, Sabah was made part of the newly formed Malayan Union.

The Sulu Sultan vehemently protested and asked the Philippine government to negotiate with the Malaysian authorities. But all diplomatic efforts proved futile, and Sabah remained under the Malaysian flag.

In 1965, a brash young Ilocano lawyer ascended to Malacañang. Thinking that Malaysia, then a fledgling nation merely two years old, was easy pickings, President Ferdinand Marcos authorized a plan to retake Sabah by force. 

In what came to be called Operation Merdeka, a group of young Moro men was recruited from Tawi-Tawi and Sulu for a secret mission that was not readily made clear to them. “Initially, they were trained in Simunul, Sulu, close to Sabah, but after the Malaysian government found out, they were transferred to Corregidor in Bataan,” Absari said.

In Corregidor, they started questioning the purpose of their training. When they found out that their mission—called Jabidah—was to retake Sabah, they mutinied, unable to stomach the thought of spilling the blood of their Muslim brethren.

“So, one by one, they were shot,” Absari narrated. “But one survived, Jibin Arula. He was found by fishermen floating at sea, bullet ridden, and he was brought to an anti-Marcos governor who then allowed him to tell the story of the Jabidah massacre.”

For many Moros, this was the final straw. The Moro academics residing in Manila immediately organized a protest calling for justice, Absari said, but instead, the military officers involved in the operation were promoted one rank higher. 

“It was a slap in the face!” said Absari. “They could not even return the bodies because the soldiers burned them to erase all evidence of that operation. What happened was the culmination of the gross injustices committed against the Moro since the time of the Spaniards.”

With backing from other Islamic nations, Moro leaders began establishing a secessionist Muslim army. Nur Misuari, then a political science instructor at the UP Diliman, led the founding of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) which engaged in an all-out war with the Philippine state.

In the infamous Proclamation 1081, Marcos cited the growing Moro unrest, along with the Communist insurgency, as basis for declaring Martial Law. In fact, one of the first orders of business after the declaration was to seize all guns and ammunition in Mindanao.

“During this period, so many things happened. Jolo was razed to the ground. Cotabato, Marawi, and many other parts of Mindanao bore witness to so much violence, so much blood,” said Absari. 

It was during these turbulent years that a mass slaughter of Moros by military men became rampant. “The Palimbang massacre is just one of many. As retribution for their fallen comrades, the soldiers would see all Muslims as their enemy, massacring entire communities perceived as sympathetic to the MNLF,” Absari recounted.

Rather than help in winning the war, these massacres prompted other Moros to join the MNLF and the armed struggle. The children of innocent civilians slain by the military would rather take up arms than die without a fight, Absari said.

News about these atrocities seldom got out of Mindanao. Because the media was controlled by the Marcos regime, the rest of the country was wholly unaware of what was happening down South. The nation slept while Jolo burned in 1974.

Since the Marcos years, numerous peace treaties have been signed between the Moro revolutionaries and the Philippine government. From the Tripoli Agreement to the Jeddah Accords, all have failed, due in large to the deep-seated mistrust on both sides.

Countless stories of Moro massacres remain untold. The Moros’ reluctance to dwell on the past, combined with an active effort by Marcos loyalists to erase the atrocities committed during Martial Law, has led to some forgotten memories that should not have been.

For Moros like Absari, peace is still the ultimate aspiration. But before peace must come justice, and the wounds of the turbulent past—made fresh by those attempting to deny it ever happened—have made cynics out of even the most hopeful. But against all odds, hope, he says, still springs eternal. ●

This article was first published in the Collegian's September 21, 2020 issue.