President Rodrigo Duterte offered self-rule to the Philippines’ Muslim minority on Monday in an attempt to defeat Islamist militants who seized a southern city in the gravest challenge to his year-old rule. Both sides said that giving the mainly Catholic nation’s large and largely impoverished Islamic minority a better choice was crucial to heading off the lure of violent extremism. Muslims since the 1970s had waged a decades-old insurgency that claimed more than 100,000 lives in the Mindanao region that includes Marawi. The MILF signed a peace treaty with Duterte’s predecessor Benigno Aquino in 2014 but Congress refused to pass the self-rule bill, a key provision of the accord. The Marawi attack on May 23 was their first major action, forcing Duterte to impose martial rule across Mindanao.

Source: Dhaka Tribune July 17, 2017 11:26 UTC