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It was around 5:30 a.m. when my cameraman Ramil knocked on the door of my room. “We have to go now. Romeo has arrived and is waiting outside the hostel,” he said. I was already up, well prepared for the meeting with one of the leaders of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) in Sulu Island. Romeo was the guide and driver set to take me and my team into the island’s jungle to meet this leader.
The plan was to return within three hours to Jolo, the island’s main city. I had promised Jolo’s mayor to attend the Philippine Independence Day ceremony. This was on June 12, 2012. I was working on a documentary about Mindanao and the Muslims of the southern Philippines, which required me to travel from Manila to Sulu Island.
My Filipino coordinator said he was tied up with his work in Manila but had arranged all the interviews and made all the arrangements for my visit to Zamboanga City and Sulu Island, including the interview with the ASG leader. He kept saying: “My brother, you will be in good hands.”
The night before I was kidnapped, he sent me a text saying the same thing. Something inside me warned me of a lurking threat but I ignored the feeling. My coordinator arranged the accommodation for me and my team at Sulu Students Hostel and insisted that I refuse to stay with the governor of the island or with the mayor of Jolo. “They should not know about our plans to meet with the ASG leader,” he said.
As Romeo drove toward the jungle, I had a feeling I would not return soon. The car crashed three times during the journey; the third time, Romeo left the car on the road and told us (I and my team) to continue on foot. This added to my feeling that something was not right; you cannot just leave the car on the road and continue with your journey unless it is serious.
The journalist in me ignored every sign of threat and kept me going. “You should do this scoop, meet the ASG leader in the jungle and get a first-hand account of the conflict in Mindanao,” I thought to myself. I had interviewed all the other parties involved in the conflict of Mindanao by then.
We were deep inside the Patikol area, ASG’s stronghold. Armed men from every side of the jungle appeared with guns and munitions. Abu Rami, an ASG leader who was later ambushed and killed by the Philippine army, gave money to Romeo, who left us with our kidnappers.
I spent 18 months in captivity, in the heart of the Sulu jungle, living among ignorant people, to say the least. When Sheikh Mohammed Hussein, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, appealed to my kidnappers to release me, they had hardly heard of Jerusalem. One of them asked me about it, to which I said: “Have you heard about Al-Aqsa Mosque?” He said: “Yes, that is in Spain?” I could barely keep myself from bursting into laughter.
I was astonished by their ignorance and could hardly believe what I heard from them in the first six months of my kidnapping. But soon I realized the jungle had its own world disconnected from the outside. I appeared alien to them. During the first month of my kidnapping, all the men, women and children would gather around my hut watching me carefully, as if I was a new creature that landed in their world.
When the mufti of Sulu, Abd Al-Baqi Abu Bakr, contacted them via a local mediator and asked them to release me, denouncing their act, they said about him: “He is not an honest man, he is astray and wants to take ransom money for himself.” I told them: “But is it right for you to deprive me of my freedom and demand to have my money, which you have no right to?”
Five years since my kidnapping, the situation in the southern Philippines does not seem to be getting any better. Kidnappings and executions of hostages continue. Canadians John Ridsdel and Robert Hall were beheaded in April and July 2016, respectively, by an ASG thug named Ben who was an illiterate and former drug addict at best.
The ASG has declared its allegiance to Daesh. In addition to groups that split from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), such as the Maute Group and a faction of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), groups from ASG joined Daesh in the Philippines and formed the State of the Philippines led by Insilon Hapilon, a former ASG leader not very different from Ben.
The Philippine government and armed forces are not innocent. They are part of the problem and their policies over the years have resulted in a sense of anger, grievance and hatred toward the state among the Muslim population in the south.
The ASG element that joined Daesh found its new umbrella very similar in its actions, as both have the same traditions and mindset. These people have been kidnapping, robbing and killing, apparently for the cause of the Moros, and allowed their ignorance to justify their ugly deeds.
People who do not respect their word, they promised to give me an interview but betrayed my team and I. They never kept a single promise they made regarding my release. Even Romeo, whom Shakespeare made a symbol of love and loyalty, turned out to be a traitor by being associated with the ASG.
• Baker Atyani can be reached on Twitter @atyanibaker.