Philippine Congress Extends Martial Law

Date: 22 July 2017 - 21:37

News ID: ۴۱۹۸۴

MANILA, Philippines (Dispatches) — The Philippine Congress on Saturday overwhelmingly approved the president’s appeal for martial law in the south to be extended to the end of the year to help troops quell a two-month siege by Daesh-linked militants and stamp out similar extremist plots in the volatile region.
House of Representatives Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez announced that senators and House members voted 261-18 in favor of granting President Rodrigo Duterte’s request in a special joint session. The 60-day martial law was to expire late Saturday.
The military chief of staff, Gen. Eduardo Ano, warned during the session that aside from the uprising in Marawi, extremist groups have plotted similar insurrections in other southern cities and that martial law has helped troops stop attacks, including bombings, elsewhere.
"There was an order for them to do their own version of Marawi in other areas, but we were able to stop this because of martial law,” Ano told the legislators.

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana played down concerns of military abuses, saying no major human rights violations have been reported since Duterte declared martial law to deal with the Marawi violence, the worst crisis in his yearlong presidency.
Some opponents argued that government forces could deal with the attack in lakeside Marawi, a center of Islamic faith in the southern third of the largely Roman Catholic nation, without resorting to martial law. Others worried that the extension was too long and that the rest of the country may eventually be placed under martial rule.
Left-wing activists opposed to Duterte’s declaration rallied outside Congress. Some unfurled protest posters in the plenary hall but were forced out by security officers.
Sen. Risa Hontiveros recalled how civil liberties were curtailed and Congress was padlocked when dictator Ferdinand Marcos imposed martial law in the Philippines in 1972. Marcos was ousted in a "people power” revolt in 1986.
Since the Marawi fighting broke out on May 23, at least 428 militants, 105 soldiers and policemen, and 45 civilians have been killed. Half a million residents have been displaced, according to the military.
During the daylong special session of Congress, a wounded army officer, 1st Lt. Kent Fagyan, told how troops smashed concrete walls of houses and buildings with sledgehammers to advance slowly toward militant positions away from sniper fire. Troops dealt with booby traps and had to wrest back control of Marawi communities room by room, he said, adding that the militants had powerful machine guns, drones and "seemingly unlimited ammunition.”
The siege on Marawi started when more than 600 heavily armed fighters, waving Daesh-style black flags, stormed into the city, occupying buildings, houses and mosques and taking hostages. Several foreign fighters, including 20 Indonesians and a Malaysian financier known as Mahmud bin Ahmad, joined the insurrection, Duterte said in a letter to Congress this past week.