“So this assembly, to chart that direction, is very timely,” Garcia, who was keynote speaker of the Assembly said as he enumerated the many successful engagements he had with the Bantay Ceasefire.

But Garcia, who spent 12 years of his military life in Mindanao, emphasized that the core issue “remains to be finding a lasting and genuine political solution to the problem of unpeace in mindanao by resolving with finality the Bangsamoro problem. Until that is achieved there is no other recourse for the volunteers to continue to preserve the ceasefire and protect our people until we finally achieve a final settlement.”

Ambassador Alistair MacDonald, head of the European Commission to the Philippines, has praised the Bantay Ceasefire for helping make “the prospect of peace seem less elusive to the people of Central Mindanao.”

In his message for the Bantay Ceasefire, Alistair said that the “Bantay Ceasefire is a unique enterprise, to my knowledge unparalleled in the world, of civil society partnering with parties to a conflict in monitoring a ceasefire. It reflects the vibrancy of civil society in Mindanao, your capacity to think outside the box for the benefit of peace, and your adaptability, as you have addressed both cease-fire monitoring and IDP protection.”

Read by Bantay Ceasefire volunteer Richel Umel of Lanao del Norte, Alistair’s message also posed a challenged for the Assembly, saying: “Of course much is still to be done for lasting peace and sustainable development to become realities in conflict affected areas of Mindanao. I know that Bantay Ceasefire and the civil society organizations behind it will continue to accompany the process and help protect the civilians. I can assure you that the EC will be standing by the people of Mindanao in this endeavor.”  

Narrating his engagement with the Bantay Ceasefire, Garcia recalled that the military, in 2003, perceived the Bantay Ceasefire as “anti-military.” 

“The Bantay Ceasefire got involved in the work and is being active in protecting and preserving the ceasefire sometime in 2003. I remember that before that, the relation between the Bantay Ceasefire and the military was not a very comfortable one.”

Garcia said that the military commanders “regarded the Bantay Ceasefire as an activist group and was anti-military.” 

But having met and worked with the Bantay Ceasefire, Garcia said he was “convinced that it is only after for what is good in the area and stand against conflict – to stop the violence because it has a very bad effect on the people.”

After seeing how the Bantay Ceasefire has helped the government negotiators “in a very informal manner,” the keynote speaker said that “the Joint Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities issued a statement that gave credit for the Bantay Ceasefire for the work that they had been doing. I guess that was what broke the (ice). Since then, we had coordinated in monitoring the ceasefire on the ground.”

While working with Bantay Ceasefire, Garcia said he witnessed the “distinguishable determination to help and to prevent conflict. “Without needing to know this, the Bantay Ceasefire had an effect to the Joint Ceasefire Committee. We had to work harder because there is a third party out there. We do not want to be caught sleeping on our job. The Bantay Ceasefire had a way, without you knowing it, of pushing the effective monitoring of the ceasefire. You put pressure on us to do our job well.”

He also admitted that the Bantay Ceasefire reports “are informations that I can rely on as far as its credibility and as far as its objectivity are concerned. I learned more about the truth of the situation not only from what we take from the MILF side nor from what is reported by the military commanders, but there was this third eye that was giving us more facts about the truth of particular incidents we were investigating.”

Lilian Mercado, country director of Oxfam-Philippines, said they were happy that humanitarian protection is already being discussed by the Bantay Ceasefire and some other civil society organizations, a matter, she added, that they had been discussing since 2002.

Mercado also challenged the Bantay Ceasefire to help in making sets of information reach the communities to make them come up with an informed decision.

“Access to information is very important in a conflict situation because in an atmosphere of fear a lot of wrong decisions are made,” she said while citing the important role of the four radio programs of the Bantay Ceasefire which Oxfam supported in the past.

The Mindanao Peoples Caucus, the mother organization of the Bantay Ceasefire, runs the MindaLinaw, a radio program aired in four stations in different provinces in Mindanao.  (Romy B. Elusfa/MindaNews Peace Correspondent, is a freelance journalist and Bantay Ceasefire volunteer).

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