Officials of the Moro National Liberation Front had called on national lawmakers to work out, via possible enabling legislative measures, the return of Sulu to the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
MNLF officials, among them Bangsamoro Labor and Employment Minister Muslimin Sema, told reporters on Thursday, June 5, that Sulu’s having been removed from the core territory of BARMM by the Supreme Court has serious implications on the government’s separate peace compacts with the Moro National Liberation Front and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
The High Tribunal’s action was based on a petition by Sulu Gov. Hadji Abdusakur Mahail Tan, who was against the fusion of their province with the Bangsamoro region.
“Sulu is an integral component of the collective aspiration of the Moro people in Southern Philippines for progress and peace via self-governance,” Sema, who is chairman of the MNLF’s central committee, said.
Sema said Sulu is the virtual birthplace of the Moro uprising for self-rule, in the context of Philippine sovereignty.
“We must not forget that what the MNLF fought for, first, was independence but agreed to autonomy. Now Sulu, which was the main flashpoint of the Mindanao secessionist conflict, was taken out from the Bangsamoro region,” Sema said.
Sema and other MNLF officials, among them Uttoh Salem Cutan, Faisal Karon and Adzfar Usman, who are members of the 80-seat Bangsamoro parliament, BARMM Trade Minister Abu Amri Tadik and leaders of the front’s Lupah-Sug State Revolutionary Committee in Sulu had agreed to call on members of the House of Representatives and the Senate to cooperate in returning Sulu to the Bangsamoro region.
The consensus was reached during their dialogue on Monday, June 1, in Patikul town in Sulu.
The Supreme Court took Sulu out from BARMM’s territory via a ruling in late 2024, something that saddened MNLF members, among them the now elderly Moro men who, as young guerillas, fought state forces in the 1970s.
The MNLF had first demanded, in peace talks during the 1970s with the administration of the then President Ferdinand E. Marcos, Sr., for autonomy covering 13 Mindanao provinces, which was stated in its first ever compact with the national government, the vaunted December 23, 1976 Tripoli Agreement.
The agreement, crafted in Tripoli, Libya by government and MNLF negotiators, was brokered by the Libyan government, a member of the then Organization of Islamic Conference, which was to become the Organization of Islamic Cooperation that also helped facilitate, via the Malaysian government, the two-decade tedious peace talks between the office of the Philippine president and the MILF.
The government-MNLF 1976 Tripoli Agreement was used as main reference in the crafting by both sides of the September 2, 1996 government-MNLF truce and, subsequently, the Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro between the government and the MILF, which led to the replacement in 2019 of the then 27-year Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao with a more empowered BARMM.
“It is hurting for us to see Sulu taken out from the Bangsamoro region’s area of coverage,” Usman said.
Karon said he is optimistic that members of the national legislature will focus attention on their sentiments.
“This is all for peace and justice to all of those who perished in our struggle for self-rule during the early 1970s until the 1980s,” said Karon, who was still a young adolescent when he joined the MNLF and figured in deadly gunfights with government troops in seaside towns in what is now Sultan Kudarat province in Region 12. (JFU, June 5, 2025, Cotabato City)