AFTER five years of being kept out of Marawi City, its residents are demanding anew that they be allowed to go back to the Main Affected Area (MAA) and rebuild their businesses and homes.
The residents led by civil society groups will stage a march rally dubbed “Limang Taong Bakwit” around Marawi City to dramatize their plight tomorrow.
Drieza Liningding, chair of the Marawi-based Moro Consensus Group said the rallyists would march from Barangay Matampay and pass by Banggolo Bridge which serves as a gateway to the Main Affected Area (MAA).
“We will just pass by because the government does not want the residents to enter what used to be their homes,” Lininding said.
He said police regularly dispersed rallies staged by residents and other internally displaced persons who want to march into Marawi City.
Five months of street fighting between government troops and pro-Islamic State Maute militants, combined with aerial bombardments by the military have left much of this once-picturesque lakeside city in ruins in 2017.
Nearly five years after the military ended the siege after killing the top militant leaders, sections of Marawi, the only predominantly Muslim city in the Philippines, remain uninhabitable.
Task Force Bangon Marawi, tasked by President Duterte to rebuild the city, presented a new sports stadium, a convention center, newly reconstructed mosques, and parks as part of the reconstruction efforts.
Other government agencies like the National Housing Authority presented newly constructed permanent and temporary shelters located on the outskirts of the city for the residents displaced by the fighting.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in its May 2020 report said more than 120,000 residents live in these permanent and temporary shelters outside Marawi City.
“All these newly constructed government buildings and mosques are nothing without the residents returning to their homes. The residents did not ask for them,” Tirmizy Abdullah, national coordinator of the Interfaith Cooperation Forum said.
Abdullah said the areas where the government constructed the Sarimanok Sports Stadium and convention center was the former site of the bustling Padian market.
