HONOR YOUR ANCESTORS! First Battle of Bud Dajo The photo above has a lot of history. Grim and forgotten. But it haunts us to this day. 107 years ago, the Tausugs of Sulu fought fiercely against another nation that tried to wrest their sovereignty from them, the United States. They fought the American soldiers who were well-armed with rifles. The Tausugs were only armed with their kris and spears. In the early years of the American colonization in the Philippines, the Muslims of southern Philippines (called Moros) were the most formidable force unassailed in the south and had remained resolute in refusing the sovereignty of the United States on their islands. For them, to pay taxes to the U.S. Government was ‘blasphemy’ since this was their land. Bud Dajo, a mountain a few miles away from Jolo, Sulu, took centerstage as it became a stronghold of the Moros (or to be specific, the ethnic group called Tausug) who would not surrender. It has been the tradition of the Tausugs to show their protest by going to the mountains where no authority could impose on them. However, the Americans, who wanted to take the whole archipelago, saw it as uncontrollable, in that from March 5 to 8, 1906, the American soldiers surrounded Bud Dajo and attacked (more correctly termed ‘massacred’) an estimated 850 Tausugs. According to Robert Fulton, two thirds of those killed were women and children. It wouldn’t be long until the photo above was released to the American media hearkened by the American group Anti-Imperialist League (of which the renowned American anti-imperialist author Mark Twain was a member). Unfortunately the events at Bud Dajo was eventually forgotten (it was election time), and the American governor of the Moro Province at the time who was in charge of the ‘pacification’, Gen. Leonard Wood, was eventually appointed as the American Governor-General of the Philippines, the major obstacle to Filipinization of the leadership of the country. Wood was also a source of headache for the Independence Mission led by Manuel L. Quezon, Sergio Osmena and Manuel Roxas, as they lobbied for Philippine independence in the U.S. Senate. Perhaps it is disturbing enough that the photo was scandalizing and inhumane. But more disturbing is the fact that many Filipinos do not know this as part of Philippine history. It would not be a surprise that the Sabah issue would escalate and be mishandled.
Posted on: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 03:22:44 +0000
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