The current violent conflicts in Mindanao in the southern Philippines can be broadly categorised into three interrelated types: those that are related to secessionist movement, those that are related to inter clan or intra clan, and those that are criminal in nature such as kidnapping, murder or homicide, robbery and other petty crimes. The same with other violent conflicts anywhere, these violent conflicts are not spontaneous but are products of structural and cultural violence that have accumulated over the years.
Among the cited broad categories of conflicts, clan feuds have been viewed as worse threat to social, economic and human development than the secessionist war in Mindanao. The Asia Foundation claims that a Social Weather Station survey in 2005 indicates that the people of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao are more concerned about clan feuds than the war between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the government (Torres III, 2007). There is cogent reason to believe such fear because while the war on secession has been on a general ceasefire except in the later part of 2008, cases of clan feuds and resultant casualties and displaced families have continued to rise.
Generally, there are three means being used to settle clan conflicts: the Muslim customary law, the Philippine laws including the Sharia’h, or the combination of these laws. However, a 2007 study of clan feuds by The Asian Foundation shows that 64% of the 1,266 recorded cases from 1930 to 2005 remain unresolved while 637 cases occurred from 2000–4 (Torres III, 2007). These figures show that despite efforts of different organisations, both government and non-government, as well as influential individuals to solve the problem of clan feuds, the prob...
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Theme three focuses on the Filipinos use of culture as a resistance or domination. In this context, Filipino culture and tradition is used as a method of maintain Filipino identity while resisting assimilation into the concept of ‘whiteness’. Specifically speaking, Filipino culture is used as a tool to point out the flaws they see in American culture. Additionally, it is a tool they use to steer their children away from the temptation of acting in a way that American culture is said to act; that is,
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For centuries, Somalia culture was different from other countries in Africa for the fact that it was not made up of a collection of tribes, but of homogeneous people. To survive, in an ever changing culture Somalis have come to rely on the supporting bond of clanship (CBC Archives, n.d). Separate federations of clans struggling for power and control are the main ingredient for instability and conflict within Somalia. The Somali clans continued fighting has dragged their country already struggling from famine and disease, to undue bloodshed. Clans that were created to offer a sense of social security and belonging for its millions of members are killing their own country. Since 1991, over 400,000 people have died from the civil war in Somalia. Another 600,000 people have died from diseases and starvation. Not everyone feel that Somalia clans are all negative, as such is viewed from the international world. According to Raquia Omar, a prominent Somali, and former head of the Human Rights Group, Africa Watch, “We are wrong to see clans as only negative.” Clans provide a strong band of people that have the same interest and history. They speak the same language and practice th...
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Violence marks much of human history. Within the sociopolitical sphere, violence has continually served as a tool used by various actors to influence and/or to control territory, people, institutions and other resources of society. The twentieth century witnessed an evolution of political violence in form and in scope. Continuing into the twenty-first, advances in technology and social organization dramatically increase the potential destructiveness of violent tools. Western colonialism left a world filled with many heterogeneous nation-states. In virtually all these countries nationalist ideologies have combined with ethnic, religious, and/or class conflicts resulting in secessionist movements or other kinds of demands. Such conflicts present opportunities for various actors in struggles for wealth, power, and prestige on both national and local levels. This is particularly evident in Indonesia, a region of the world that has experienced many forms of political violence. The state mass killings of 1965-66 mark the most dramatic of such events within this region. My goal is to understand the killings within a framework of collec...
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