Moro Islamic Liberation Front Chairman Al-Hajj Murad Ebrahim said his visit to the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ headquarters in Camp Aguinaldo on Monday highlighted the strong partnership between the two institutions.
“Today, I am truly honored to join our partners in peace, from the highest leadership of the AFP down to the lowest ranking elements of this institution to reciprocate the visit of your Chief-of-Staff, General Carlito Galvez Jr., when he visited Camp Darapanan last Oct. 6, 2018,” Murad said in his speech.
“This visit is a concrete manifestation not only of the solid partnership of our institutions but a testament to the enduring friendship built upon the solid foundation of our mutual commitment to work for peace.”
Meanwhile, 21 days before he retires Galvez wants to be a peace consultant in a bid to oversee the ongoing peace talks with the MILF.
Galvez applied for the peace advocate portfolio at the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process during Murad’s visit to Camp Aguinaldo.
“I already conveyed my interest with OPAPP and I told Secretary Dureza that I can be some sort of consultant, so he accepted my request,” Galvez told reporters.
Murad said words could not express his gratitude and those of his people for being honored at the AFP headquarters, considering he left school to fight the very same institution who now honored him and his party.
“More than four decades ago, I walked out of a university without completing my engineering degree. Many of my Bangsamoro colleagues did the same, and since then I have avoided military installations and camps,” Murad said.
“And to be very candid, during those war years, I had thought only of destroying or neutralizing military camps and I never imagined during those dark days that I would one day step inside a military camp and be feted with this exceptional honor by what used to be our adversary.”
But Murad said MILF never considered the AFP or any soldier as their enemy and emphasized that their enemies were oppression and injustice.
“This is the teaching of Islam and this is what we have always adhered to in the Code of Conduct of the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces,” Murad said.
“In pursuit, however, of our struggle for the right to self-determination of our people, we saw the AFP as the instrument of the injustices committed against our people such as the loss of our homeland, discrimination and prejudices, massacres as well as the denial of our freedom to practice our religion.”
Murad said this was very true during the martial law years under the Marcos regime.
“The resort to an armed struggle was a last and difficult option from what we viewed then was a genocidal war being pursued by the Marcos regime against our people,” Murad said.
But he was quick to point out that the AFP started its gradual transformation during the 1986 EDSA Revolution where the military refused to heed the order to kill or maim the people it had sworn to defend and protect. with Francisco Tuyay
