DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
PHILIPPINE STATISTICS AUTHORITY
2018 BANTOG DATA MEDIA AWARDS CHAMPION
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Sunday, May 26, 2019 Vol. 14 No. 228
2018 EJAP JOURNALISM AWARDS
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RELATIVES of soldiers who were killed in the siege of Marawi City in southern Philippines by the Islamic State group-aligned fighters prepare to lay white roses at the Marawi Memorial pylon to commemorate its second anniversary on May 23, 2019, at the Libingan ng mga Bayani in Taguig City. The May 23 siege that troops crushed in October 2017 killed more than 1,100 mostly militants and displaced hundreds of thousands of Muslim Filipinos. AP/BULLIT MARQUEZ
UNSEEN SCARS ICRC reports ‘frustration’ of displaced residents two years after Marawi siege
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By Manuel T. Cayon
AVAO CITY—The government’s failure to hasten rehabilitation work in the war-damaged Marawi two years after terrorists laid siege to the once-majestic city has continued to fuel frustration among the survivors, made worse by the promise of President Duterte that they will be on the priority list of his administration, a neutral aid organization has said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said more than 100,000 former residents “still have no homes to return to.” “The deep scars left by the 2017 conflict in Marawi City, Lanao del Sur, in southern Philippines, continue to haunt over 100,000 people who still do not have a home to return to,” it said. “Despite the numerous aid efforts that have truly helped those in need over the two years, the people of Marawi have grown tired and frustrated. They
want to stand on their own feet again and stop depending on assistance,” said Martin Thalmann, head of the ICRC delegation in the Philippines. The complications—whether they have been living with relatives, or are in evacuation centers and transition sites—would include the daily struggle for access to potable water, viable livelihood opportunities and most important, permanent shelters, the ICRC said. Thalmann noted, though, that authorities “were trying to address complex issues so that the rehabilita-
tion of the most affected area (MAA) could begin ”although organizations of evacuees and Maranao leaders have pointed out the visible inaction by the government to show that they were indeed combing the battle area for unexploded ordnances.” The tall grasses alone in the MAA are proof enough that the area has not been checked or visited by any human, Maranao leaders said. Housing czar Eduardo del Rosario has cited the unexploded bombs as the main reason Continued on A2
As new Cold War looms, China struggles to grasp Trump’s end game
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‘Hard to tell’
HEN Donald Trump first took office in 2017, officials in Beijing saw a pragmatic businessman: All that tough campaign talk, they argued, was merely Art-of-the-Deal negotiating tactics rather than deeply held beliefs. Yet, more than two years later, President Xi Jinping finds himself on the verge of a new Cold War his government sees fanned by Washington’s most ideological China hawks. What’s worse, the view that China is a strategic competitor that must be thwarted at all costs is picking up supporters across the US political spectrum by the day. As Trump continues to raise the stakes with threats to kneecap Huawei Technologies Co. and other companies over what the US says are rising national security risks, officials in Beijing are weigh-
ing their options to respond. They are stoking up anti-US sentiment and drawing up contingency plans to bail out Huawei, while also still calling for dialogue to resolve the dispute. “I don’t think there is a clear strategy that’s being conveyed through the system,” said Ether Yin, a partner at Trivium China, a Beijing-based consultancy. “On the one side, party media is stoking nationalism, but when you talk to officials they are still quite restrained in their criticisms of the US.”
PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 52.5220
DONALD TRUMP
AL DRAGO/BLOOMBERG
THAT hesitancy stems from uncertainty over whether Trump is simply ramping up threats before ultimately reaching a deal, or if the US is fundamentally looking to curb China’s rise as a global superpower. It’s a question that even seasoned Washington policy wonks are struggling to answer. “It’s very hard to tell whether the effort to deal with Huawei is simply a national security issue or a negotiating tactic to make progress in the trade negotiations,” said Scott Kennedy, director of the Project on Chinese Business and Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, who was in Beijing last week for meetings when the Commerce Department placed Huawei on an entity list. The list prohibits US companies from providing critical technology to Huawei without an export license. “It could be the NSC agrees Continued on A2
n JAPAN 0.4793 n UK 66.4823 n HK 6.6916 n CHINA 7.5991 n SINGAPORE 38.0815 n AUSTRALIA 36.2349 n EU 58.7248 n SAUDI ARABIA 14.0066
Source: BSP (May 24, 2019 )