Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte yesterday rejected proposals for him to declare a state of emergency in a violent southern island to more rapidly defeat Abu Sayyaf militants, who killed 15 soldiers in his government’s largest single-day combat loss so far.
Duterte also announced that government troops and police would not enforce a warrant of arrest for prominent Muslim rebel leader Nur Misuari, who leads one of two large Muslim insurgent groups in the country’s south, so they could talk.
While Duterte has pursued talks with Misuari’s Moro National Liberation Front and the larger Moro Islamic Liberation Front, he has ordered troops to destroy the smaller, but more brutal Abu Sayyaf, which is notorious for bombings, ransom kidnappings and beheadings.
A massive military offensive in Sulu, a predominantly Muslim province where the Abu Sayyaf has had a long presence in lush jungles, has left 30 militants dead, including an influential commander.
However, the Abu Sayyaf on Monday struck back as the Philippines was celebrating National Heroes’ Day, and killed 15 soldiers, including one officer, in fighting off Sulu’s mountainous Patikul town.
Asked if he would relent to a longstanding proposal by military officials to place Sulu under a state of emergency to allow government forces to arrest militants more easily and take tougher action against local officials conniving with the Abu Sayyaf, Duterte said he would not.
“No, it’s just punitive police action by the security forces of the government,” Duterte said at a news conference. “The magnitude of the trouble there does not warrant anything except the industry of the” military and police.
Duterte asked Misuari to come out of hiding after being criminally charged for his role in a 2013 rebel siege of Zamboanga city that left more than 200 combatants and villagers dead.
Nearly 300 of Misuari’s rebel were captured.
Duterte said Misuari preferred to meet him in Kuala Lumpur and replied during a telephone call on Tuesday that he was ready to meet the rebel anywhere.
The 77-year-old Misuari instigated a Muslim separatist rebellion in the south during former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos’ rule in the 1970s, but accepted limited autonomy for minority Muslims in the south and signed a 1996 peace deal with the government.
However, many of his rebels refused to lay down their arms and continued on-and-off attacks.
Although he has faded into the background and is now sickly, Misuari still commands a sizable armed group and Duterte said he would not dare put him in police detention.
“If he dies for whatever reason, we’re compromised,” Duterte said. “There is going to be a conflagration, it’ll be hard for us. He’s the only known leader who has the influence and the stature.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing