Manila: US Ambassador Sung Kim has announced a P730 million emergency assistance for Marawi City while vowing to work for the return of bells taken during the early 1900s as war booty by American soldiers.
“I am pleased to make an important announcement today: The United States government — through USAID (United States Assistance for International Development)— is making available over P730 million (approximately $15 million or Dh55 million) for ongoing emergency relief operations and the longer term recovery and rehabilitation of Marawi City and the surrounding area,” Sung said on Tuesday.
The United States had been increasingly involved in assisting the government in Manila confront the crisis in Marawi City — both countries consider the conflict there as part of the global war against terror, which was spawned by religious extremism.
“The most urgent challenge is the conflict in Marawi… We all look forward to the end of the crisis, and the end of the fighting and suffering. We have been and will continue to support the Philippine government’s efforts to deal with the crisis,” Sung said during a speech at the US Embassy in Manila.
Fighting started in Marawi City on May 23 when Daesh-influenced groups, the Lanao del Sur-based Maute and the Abu Sayyaf which mainly operated in Western Mindanao attacked government installations in Marawi City after the Philippine military and police started a crackdown.
The more than three months of fighting claimed countless number of lives, damaged properties, and shattered a thriving city with rich customs and traditions.
In the words of Philippine Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, “the fighting spared no one — Muslims and Christians alike, combatants and non-combatants, young and old while displacing hundreds of thousands of residents.”
According to Sung, the help from the United States will be split into the following: P153 million (Dh11 million) humanitarian assistance which will be coursed through USAID’s Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance, and over P577 million (Dh41.53 million) to support the early recovery, stabilisation and rehabilitation of Marawi and the surrounding area.
The P153 million USAID assistance will deliver critical relief supplies such as safe drinking water, hygiene kits, shelter materials for evacuation centres, and for programmes to protect displaced women and children.
On the other hand, the P577 million will support the early recovery, stabilisation and rehabilitation of Marawi and the surrounding area. “This money will focus on restoring basic public services, including health care, water, and electricity, jumpstarting livelihoods, and promoting community reconciliation and alternatives to violent extremism,” Sung said.
At the same time, Sung said the US is committed on working towards a solution on the return of the Balangiga Bells. The several-hundred-years-old church bells were taken by American colonial troops from a church in Central Philippines’ Eastern Samar in 1901 as a war booty after suffering casualties from Filipino insurgents who waged an uprising.
The event, regarded in Philippine history books as the Balangiga Massacre, left a dark page in the country’s relations with the United States.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, during his annual presidential address last July, had demanded the return of the colonial relic.
“Give us back the Balangiga Bells, they belong to us,” said Duterte.
Two of the bells were placed as memorials in the US while one adorns the landscape of an American overseas base in South Korea.