Maguindanao town declared ‘BIFF-cleared’

 Mayor Zamzamin Ampatuan of Rajah Buayan, Maguindanao. (PHOTO COURTESY OF GILMAR LAO – COTABATO MEDIA GROUP/ MINDANAO EXPOSE’)

COTABATO CITY  ---  A town mayor in Maguindanao said last Septemebr 27 that his town is free from terror elements of the Islamic State-linked Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF).

Mayor Zamzamin Ampatuan of Rajah Buayan, Maguindanao, asserted such during the Regional Peace and Order Council in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (RPOC-BARMM) meeting held at the BARMM compound here.

The mayor said that his constituents’ support to security sectors has made his town cleared from the BIFF.

“It was unprecedented, it never happened in the past,” Ampatuan said of the town's "all-out support" to military and police authorities.

Ampatuan said it was the people who voluntarily provided the police and military of the BIFF’s location and plot to disrupt the town’s peace and order.

“Credit should go to the people who also shun violent extremism,” he said. “Residents, mostly farmers, alert us, the police and the Army when they see BIFF roaming around their villages,” he told the security officials.

Ampatuan said the BIFF forces relocated to areas outside of the municipality after the incident and have not returned since.

Lt. Gen. Cirilito Sobejana, chief of the Western Mindanao Command, who attended the meeting, lauded Ampatuan and his people for the determination to reject terrorism.

Sobejana urged other local officials in Maguindanao and other parts of the BARMM to emulate the cooperation being displayed by the Rajah Buayan people in "repulsing terrorists threatening to sow terror in their communities." (EDWIN FERNANDEZ, PNA – COTABATO / MINDANAO EXPOSE’)