Bangsamoro women's civic leader leads Marawi liberation commemoration in Iligan
ILIGAN CITY: A nationally-known Moro women's leader led the commemoration of the Marawi Liberation from the ISIS-inspired Maute and allied groups who siege the Islamic city of Marawi for five months since May 23, 2017.
Ms. Samira Gutoc, leader of Ranaw Rescue Team (RRT) spoke during the commemoration as a Maranao women's leader who had sacrificed a lot for the welfare of her people especially the tens of thousands of evacuees displaced by the siege.
Gutoc emphasized that her being a woman is not a hindrance to be a leader of an organization in the country's prime university, the University of the Philippines Diliman (UP-Diliman) which has produced the kind of Miriam Defensor, and which has produced presidents, "the UP Diliman which is helping me to become senator of the Republic of the Philippines."
She said that her struggle and the struggle of Marawi is a struggle of each woman left by her husband, a struggle of a family hurt by the disaster. "The struggle of Marawi is a struggle of those who could not rise up to where they should be," she stressed.
She said she did not invent a story when she said in Congress that women had no underwear when they ran for their life during the siege.
Gutoc added parents and children were not together when they evacuated their homes.
She said IDPs decried why they were not informed that heavy wars would take place.
Gutoc was appointed by President Duterte as a member of the expanded Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC) that drafted the Bangsamooro Basic Law or what is now Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL).
She resigned from the BTC due to the issue on Moro women's rape joke by President Duterte.
- RSP
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