US Peace Corps to stay out of Mindanao due to threats
US Peace Corps to stay out
of Mindanao due to threats
Posted: 1:55 AM (Manila Time) | Jan. 15, 2004
Agence France-Presse
AMERICAN Peace Corps volunteers will not return to strife-torn Mindanao until security threats posed by Islamic militants are removed, an official announced Wednesday.
"Their safety and security are a high priority for us," said US Peace Corps director Gaddie Vazquez.
The Peace Corps pulled out of the southern Philippine region of Mindanao in March amid a spate of bombings blamed on Muslim militants believed allied to the Jemaah Islamiyah, the regional chapter of the al-Qaeda terror network.
One American was among the fatalities in the bombings.
Muslim separatist rebels and armed bandits, including groups allied to al-Qaeda and its Southeast Asian wing, Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), are active in the southern Philippines and have abducted and killed Americans in recent years.
Vazquez said the decision not to deploy volunteers in the south was based on the general security situation and not on any specific threat against the Peace Corps.
He added that some 40 US Peace Corps volunteers would be deployed in other parts of the Philippines this month to work in such areas as education, youth development and environmental management.
They would join some 134 other volunteers already assigned in the northern and central parts of the country.
In 1990, the Peace Corps briefly suspended operations in the Philippines after communist guerrillas in the Visayas central islands abducted one of its volunteers.
