Police authorities warned the public to be vigilant last week after the military clashed with Abu Sayyaf terrorists on Bohol island, adding that they should report suspicious activity to police.
For one hotel staff member in Cebu City, who apparently took the directive very much to heart, just speaking the language of southern Mindanao’s Muslim minority community counts as “suspicious activity.”
According to Cebu Daily News, the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team had to pay a house call to check out the alleged suspicious activity after getting a call from the staffer at the Sugbutel hotel.
So were they terrorists? Nope.
In fact, the men in question were government officials from Basilan who were simply in town for a conference.
Basilan, a province in the southern Philippines, is home to a large Muslim population and part of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Basilan is one of 3 provinces with an Abu Sayyaf presence.
While the report didn’t mention which language the group spoke, Yakan and Tausug are the languages most commonly spoken by the Muslim residents of the island.
Amir Mawallil, the youth office chief of the ARMM wrote about the incident in a column for ABS-CBNNews.
“We all speak a different language and yet we never looked at each other as a threat,” he said. “Not once did I think of calling the police, no matter how unfamiliar the language was.”
Mawallil added: “That is why I find it curious, if not troubling, how one could think of calling the police just because he heard a new, unfamiliar sound — one could assume danger right off the bat instead of engaging in conversation and asking what the language was and what stories it holds.”
Cebu City’s police chief Joel Doria, however, said that the hotel staff and police were just taking “precautionary measures to secure the area.”
While the armed clash in Bohol has ended, residents in the region are still on alert, as authorities continue to hunt for Abu Sayyaf suspects not killed during the clash, which saw two elderly people killed in the crossfire.
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