Legitimizing bandits
June 27, 2008 10:23 am ReportsMr. Dura is a staffwriter for the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility.
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Would it have improved the prospects for peace negotiations between the bandit group and the government if ABS-CBN’s Ces Drilon had obtained and aired that exclusive interview with the new leaders of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) she said she was after? Should peace negotiations between a police problem like the ASG and the government be on the national agenda at all?
Both questions are crucial to the main ethical issue, unremarked by many commentators, that was at the heart of the Ces Drilon episode. Mostly dismissed as a spent force and no more a terrorist organization than a common kidnap for ransom gang operating in Manila would be, any interview with ASG leaders aired over a major network would have re-conferred on it the status it once had as a supposedly separatist rebel group, thus putting it on the same level as formations with clear political aims like the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The capacity to confer legitimacy and status is inherent in the mass media.
The ASG gained notoriety in the late 1990s as a supposedly terrorist organization with its bombing, assassination and kidnap for ransom operations. Eventually, however, its lack of any clear political aim made it clear that it doesn’t even qualify as a terrorist group, the definition of which includes having a political program. It does qualify, however, as a group that uses terrorist methods for non-political aims.
As for its origins, Octavio Dinampo, the Mindanao State University professor who was kidnapped along with Drilon, told the Manila Mainichi Shimbun that the ASG is not linked with Al Qaeda as has been repeatedly claimed, but is a “locally-grown organization” supposed to be known as the Al Harakatul Al Islamiya. “( Al Qaeda) never created this so-called ASG. This ASG is the creation of the Philippine military,” Octavio said.
The group has not had much of a media presence after its leader Khadaffy Janjalani and senior ASG commander Abu Sulaiman were killed in September 2006 and January 2007, respectively. It has receded in the national consciousness primarily because it is correctly perceived as no more than a bandit group that deserves police action rather than peace negotiations.
Was the story on the new leadership of the ASG then worth risking life and limb? Drilon said it herself after they were released by the terrorists that she had gravely endangered the lives of her colleagues. The experience was sobering, she said, and no story is worth any life.
DJB Rizalist :
Date: June 28, 2008 @ 4:44 pm
Considering that ASG has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and the United Nations Security Council Special Committee on Global Terrorism, I find your point of view hard to accept. Also, the crime of terrorism as defined in the Human Security Act does not require that acts of terrorism be done with a political purpose, only that some illegal act is being forced upon the State. I would also question your assertion that most people consider ASG to be a mere bandit group. In fact, it is certain Mass Media and NGO groups that want to promote that representation of the group. Their beheading of 14 Marines last year and a whole series of dastardly acts makes them much more than a “bandit group.”
My own view is that they are in fact a convenient pawn in the shell game played by those groups like MNLF and MILF who pretend they want peace and progress for Mindanao, when really they want to establish a Islamist theocracy that will threaten the whole region, not just the Philippines.
As the NPA is to CPP, so ASG is to MILF/MNLF, although they do not acknowledge it.
DJB Rizalist :
Date: June 30, 2008 @ 5:01 pm
I should like to add that the claim of the Mass Media that it serves the Public’s Right to Know with courage is controverted by the self-evident ideological stance they take when it comes to terrorist groups like MNLF/MILF/ASG and CPP/NPA/NDF. More than these groups themselves, it is certain folks in the mass media that are miseducating and misinforming the people. Some are willing tools of these inhumane and brutally violent groups, serving as propaganda outlets and apologists for them.
There is nothing responsible about that because it is the cynical use of freedom and democracy. Fairness and accuracy in reporting are mere slogans given the performance and record of commercial journalists addicted to scoops and sensationalism while surreptiously aiding nihilists and bad, bad people.