To these people saying that residents of the Ground Zero of Marawi cannot reclaim their home and land if they do not have the title or if they have it will be bought from them:
First of all, most of the land in that area are owned by natives of Dansalan who refused to sell their land even before the siege happened.
Secondly, to whom will this land go if you refuse to give it back? The government? Our ancestors owned these lands even before there was a republic government in this country or even before we even became one country.
How dare you?! You did not protect our homes from the terrorists. You pounced on it immediately by bombing it unrelentingly. You and the terrorists drove us away from our homes with nothing to help sustain us for the last five months. And now that you have “liberated” us from the terrorists you are shackling us again with your half-baked inconsiderate and exclusivist plans?
We have heard so many unbelievable, unrealistic, and un-unified plans about reclaiming our homes that instead of rejoicing that the terrorists are dead and we can return home, we are terrified that we are going to lose it forever!
So many of us are crying out loud and yet we are so unheard. Despite showcasing our nightmares in your various consultations it seems that we have not softened those hearts whose interests do not represent ours.
And then there are the vultures who feed on our misery. You know who you are. I will not pray that you or the children of your children experience what we have been experiencing in the last five months or even in the last decades as Muslims or Bangsamoros.
A Muslim cannot wish that upon another person. I just pray that God endows you with the heart to listen and take upon yourself to do the right and just thing for humanity even if life on earth is only temporary and eternity awaits us in the afterlife.
Aim for Jannah not purgatory.
Clear our homes of danger.
Give us back our lands.
Support us with OUR plans of rebuilding our interrupted lives.
Inshallah we will rise again – stronger and better. (MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. OUR Marawi is open to anyone who wishes to share his/her thoughts on what is happening in the country’s lone Islamic city. Zahria P. Muti-Mapandi is executive director of the Al-Mujadilah Development Foundation Incorporated in Marawi City. This piece was first posted on her FB page. Permission to reprint granted to MindaNews).
