Anak Mindanao (AMIN) partylist Rep. Amihilda Sangcopan has filed a bill declaring March 18 of every year as the  Bangsamoro Day in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) to commemorate the infamous 1968 Jabidah Massacre.  

She filed House Bill No. 7000 seeking the declaration of March 18 as the Bangsamoro Day to commemorate the massacre of young Bangsamoro men on Corregidor Island on March 18, 1968. 

“This year marks the 52nd anniversary of the infamous Jabidah Massacre. The declaration of March 18 as Bangsamoro Day will give the Bangsamoro people a chance to revisit the struggles of their forbears as they move towards the dream of being recognised as a unified political unit existing harmoniously with the lumads and even the migrant settlers,” she said in her bill’s explanatory note. 

“The commemoration of the Jabidah Massacre will capture and integrate in the history of the Bangsamoro people the turbulent days that unified the Muslim ethnic groups towards the fulfilment of their aspiration as an empowered and self-directed people,” Sangcopan said. 

She said the Jabidah Massacre first came to public attention on March 18, 1968 when two fishermen rescued a man named Jibin Arula from the waters just off Caballo Island on Manila Bay. 

Arula was said to be the lone survivor of the killing of a group of Muslim Army recruits by armed personnel. 

“The gist of the narrative recounted that the trainees refused to continue their training for Oplan Jabidah, and demanded to be returned home. That particular batch of recruits were disarmed, a number  were sent home, and some others were transferred to a regular military camp in Luzon. Another batch of recruits were killed by armed personnel, with only one survivor, Jibin Arula, managing to escape,” Sangcopan said. 

“Until now, there are some interpretations that the fateful event never took place. In spite of the disputes about the facts of the massacre, historians agree that the Jabidah Massacre was one of the most important flashpoint that ignited the Muslim insurgency in the Philippines,” she noted. 

According to some accounts, the Jabidah Massacre gave birth to the  Mindanao Independence Movement in 1969 and subsequently, to the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), from which the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) broke away from in the early 1980s.

Sangcopan said in 2015, the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) installed a marker for the “Mindanao Garden of Peace” affirming that the Corregidor Island “served as a camp for training Moro youth as a secret group led by the Philippine Army.”

“The marker represented a moment of triumph in the Bangsamoro struggle against centuries of historical injustice in the Philippines,” she said.