By ALI G. MACABALANG
COTABATO CITY – Hundreds of evacuees from Marawi are set to gather at the Bayanihan Village in Iligan City today to expose alleged “harassments” they have been enduring against a certain local official in an effort to elicit intervention from higher authorities.
The rally was originally designed to demand participation in the planning and implementation of rehabilitation efforts in war-torn Marawi City.
It was also meant to press officials to let them return to their respective homes.
But facilitators now also want the rally, dubbed as “M’balingan tano sa (let us return to) Ground Zero,” to include the exposing of activities by henchmen of a local official in Iligan City, which, they said, are meant to agitate them.
The Bayanihan village, located at Sta. Elena in Iligan City, is replete with housing units built for families displaced in 2011 by typhoon Sendong.
Some of these families would go on to sell their occupied units to Maranaos who fled Marawi City following the 2017 siege.
Supposedly, an elected official in Iligan City who doesn’t take kindly to Maranaos is taking great effort to evict the new occupants, including subjecting them to various form of harassment.
Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) Vice Gov. Haroun Al-Rashid Lucman, Jr. has since backed up the claim citing numerous documents he received from alleged victims.
“The Iligan city government is making all kinds of harassment to the Maranao residents in the Bayanihan village who are mostly IDPs,” he shared in a recent interview, noting the latest of these harassments occurred only last Tuesday with hooded armed men posing as police officers raiding “without search warrant” the house of a Maranao evacuee, and planting a .38 cal. Revolver and a sachet of shabu in the place.
“The situation is getting out of hand. We need the national gov’t to intervene lest this degenerates into a serious security issue,” Lucman said.
Lucman said he had informed Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana about the evacuees’ concerns, and the latter had assured him of swift action.