The community representatives from Basilan come from Lamitan on the northwestern tip of the island facing Zamboanga City and the adjoining municipality of Sumisip on the southern tip. The women leaders presented this picture of their community experience during the workshop:

We come from two barangays in Basilan. It happens that the Manggal (in Sumisip) and Candiis (in Lamitan) communities are endowed with rich agricultural and aquamarine resources. These are very abundant. We have a healthy soil. Ours is an all-Muslim community, although there are Tausug, Sama, and Yakan; while over there on their side, the population is mixed as to tribes and religion. Those who come from our place speak all three dialects. The Yakan, by the way, are the natives of Basilan.

In both communities, we experience massive displacement every time there is rido, there would be fighting… constant displacement. The people do not have an evacuation center. They go and stay with relatives and friends.

Our communities lack access to higher education. Most of the people in our island have been schooled up to the elementary grades only. The high schools are few and far between. So in our communities, most of the people are farmers. Our men usually go to Malaysia because over there it is easy for them to find work. If they stay in our place, the only choices they have is to either go to the sea or to the farm. That’s all the work they can do, but they don’t seem to like it because they don’t feel safe here. They feel a lot safer when they are in Malaysia than if they stay in their own homeland.

In Candiis, in my area, some parents tell their children that elementary education is all they need—like, if they can now write their names they should go abroad. Go abroad so they could help the family because they have so many siblings and it’s hard for their fathers to earn enough. And every time there are military operations, it is not safe for the men to go out to work.

What’s scary are the ridos when they break out. And also when the military conducts offensives. Those in Davao and even in Manggal are happy when there see soldiers. In Candiis, we are afraid when the soldiers come. We don’t trust the military. But at least now there have been some improvement among our soldiers, which is why we insist that if they are going to send soldiers to Mindanao, make these the well-trained ones, the ones with heart. The patriotic soldiers don’t… they don’t distinguish whether you are Moro or whatever—so long as you are a Filipino they will take care of you. They respond to their duties to protect the civilian. But just the same, when they are in our area, the civilians quake in fear. Even though I am with the government, I also feel that. It’s because when the military forces come, war would happen and they would use cannons. They don’t care if their cannons would hit houses, if they hit civilians, they don’t care. That’s it.

The residents do know if things are going to get violent because both Manggal and Candiis are docking areas, that’s where they come in with the kidnap victims. We see … we see the kidnappers pass by the barangay with their victims. So when the military troops come to pursue them we would know—what comes to mind is that there’s going to be an encounter soon because the soldiers are already here.

Our communities are along the coast so we can see the soldiers coming into the island. They don’t bring the kidnap victims to our barangay any more like they did before because I had my cousin come home to help heal our community from this malady… so they won’t any more bring in kidnap victims here, I really asked him to come home. So now the kidnappers can’t come in because we would fight them off. Of course, I had to ask him to come back. I can’t do it myself. He can do it.

These things will keep on happening unless we intervene. Some NGOs try. In my area, I am alone in trying to intervene… to try and solve our problems. In my own little way, I try to teach people their fundamental rights that they could invoke. Recently, there were three… two American citizens who were kidnapped. The soldiers searched our community when I wasn’t there. I felt bad about that. They

should have the courtesy to inform, to say “Good evening, may we enter your home?” Civilians can’t do anything else but say yes.

They entered the rooms where the children and the young women slept. We don’t have many rooms in our houses… in the houses in our community. They entered when they shouldn’t. They shouldn’t invade homes and search homes that way.

We don’t really have a plan of action. When something happens, that’s when we react. We don’t plan ahead what to do. When things are safe, we go back home. We don’t plan on things like what to eat, how to… That’s life. That’s how we live there. No “when there’s fighting, here’s what we do.” That even includes me. I have no plan when there are (military) operations. What we do is, if the fighting is in Candiis Proper, we go to… and if it happens here, we go somewhere else… if fighting gets there, too, we evacuate again for Kasangaan. That’s what we do. So, there really is no plan of action about what to do, what to use.

In Manggal, it’s different. There is a cooperative in Manggal—the Manggal Development Agrarian Reform Cooperative. This has 246 beneficiaries. The cooperative management designs the response plan so that all activities would have direction. The cooperative plants rubber, cacao, and coconut.