Back in Ireland after his release last month from captivity in the Philippines, Fr Michael Sinnott describes his kidnappers’ strange mix of extremism and decency, and how he survived his ordeal
THE PHONE CALL came less than two days after Fr Michael Sinnott had been spirited away from his home on Mindanao, a troubled island located in the south-eastern reaches of the Philippines. The men holding the Co Wexford-born priest used their mobile phones constantly, usually for short, terse conversations as they plotted their next step. But this call was different. When the man Fr Sinnott refers to as his chief guard hung up, he was beaming.
“He told me, with a certain amount of glee, that I had been on CNN,” the priest recalls. “Even if we don’t get a ransom, he said, we will at least get international attention and publicity for our cause.”
It is this cause that fuels what is often referred to as one of the world’s great forgotten wars. Muslims in Mindanao have been fighting for autonomy since the first Spanish colonisers arrived on the shores of the archipelago they would eventually name after their king, Philip II, five centuries ago. The island’s Muslims later chafed against the rule of the US, which succeeded Spain as the colonial power, and continued to resist all attempts to impose control after the Philippines had secured its independence. Since the late 1970s, fighting between government forces and separatist groups in the region has claimed 120,000 lives and forced up to two million people from their homes.
As someone who has spent much of the last five decades in the Philippines, arriving in Mindanao for the first time in 1957, Fr Sinnott was only too aware of the tensions and violence that has wracked this, the second-largest island in the country. But the long days he spent in the hands of what he describes as a “lost command” or breakaway faction of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a secessionist group now engaged in talks with the Manila government, provided the Columban priest with a unique insight into the minds of those who will stop at nothing but an independent – and Islamic – Mindanao. It was an experience that now, more than a month after his release, makes him fear that peace will remain elusive in the region.
“When it came to their ideology, they were almost fanatical,” Fr Sinnott says, recalling the lectures of his kidnappers during his 32 days in captivity. “They said they would fight, and their children would fight, and their children’s children would fight, until they had an independent Islamic state in Mindanao with the Koran as the constitution.”
Some of the men holding the priest showed off scars from bullet wounds resulting from clashes with government troops. One fighter, an 18-year-old, confided that he should be “pushing a ballpoint pen instead of carrying an Armalite rifle”, recalls Fr Sinnott. The cause had become a way of life. “My chief guard told me he had seven children, five boys and two girls. He said he was sorry about the two girls because he would prefer seven boys who could fight for freedom.”
The sprightly 79-year-old priest, who says he built up something of a rapport with his captors, was unafraid to question their aims.
“I pointed out to them that the reality is that the vast majority in Mindanao are not Muslim,” he says. “But they didn’t seem to think that would be a problem when they took over. I think they thought the non-Muslims would just hand over what they had.”
The militants shared with him their vision of what an Islamic state of Mindanao would entail. “They said that when they get to power they will establish a perfect state where they would shut down all the prostitution houses and nightclubs, and there would be no liquor – and no stealing, because if you steal you’ll have your hand cut off, according to the Koran.”
Despite their hardline views, Fr Sinnott says they showed no animosity towards his Catholic faith. “They respected me . . . they said they would pray to Allah that I would be released quickly, and they told me to pray to my Lord that I would be released quickly . . . They spoke very little to me about religion per se. Their main objective was local – it was to do with independence. They didn’t seem to know very much about the outside world.”
MANY OBSERVERS BELIEVE remarks by senior Philippines security officials that the MILF was involved in the abduction may have delayed Fr Sinnott’s release, and the priest says one of his captors told him this was the case. The accusation outraged the MILF leadership and they only agreed to play a formal role in release efforts once it was retracted.
The kidnapping gang was incensed when the MILF publicly condemned the abduction and declared it contrary to the teachings of the Koran. “One of them said it’s all right for the MILF to say that kidnapping is against the Koran, because they’re getting plenty of money and support from outside,” Fr Sinnott says. “He said we’re not getting anything from outside, and this is the only way we have of getting money to buy arms and ammunition.”
During his captivity, Fr Sinnott was forced to hike through dense jungle, and for some time he was held in swamplands. The guards fed him white bread spread with mayonnaise along with crackers and rice. The priest spent his time napping, talking and praying.
“The days were long so there was plenty of time to pray,” he says. “But I found it difficult to pray, strangely enough, and I was annoyed with the Lord at the beginning because I thought that now at least He could give me a sense of His closeness and a sense of devotion. But it was just an awful effort to pray.
“A calm and peace eventually came, along with a sense that I could leave it in the hands of the Lord and take it day by day. I decided to just let what was going to happen happen.”
More than a week into his ordeal, rumours began to spread that Fr Sinnott was dead. This speculation stemmed largely from the fact that he did not have access to the daily medication he has taken since undergoing heart surgery four years ago. The kidnappers decided to make a video to show that the priest was alive. Fr Sinnott agreed to issue an appeal for help while holding a copy of a newspaper dated October 22nd, 11 days after he was seized. But he refused to concede to other demands.
“They wanted me to say that I was very poorly, that I had no medicine and I was very weak in the video – which I wouldn’t do,” he says. “They also wanted me to put in a special appeal to my relatives to pay a ransom, which I also refused to do. I told them I wouldn’t put a guilt trip on my family.”
But Fr Sinnott is keen to stress how well he was treated in general. “Apart from the lectures, they couldn’t have been nicer or kinder to me, given the difficult circumstances we were in. My chief guard said to me at one stage that I was like his father and he was my son,” he recalls. “The only sour note was at the very end. We had made a pact that when my chief guard brought me to freedom, I would give him my watch. But when we were pulling in to land on the day I was released, he roughly swiped the watch off my hand and then pushed me out of the boat.”
Fr Sinnott has witnessed much political turmoil during the decades he has spent in the Philippines, particularly during the grim years of the Marcos regime. “It was very distressing,” he says of a time when several parishioners were killed and their mild-mannered Irish priest was threatened and branded a communist after he condemned the violence. “You had this feeling of utter powerlessness and helplessness. All you could do was to stand by the people. An awful lot of innocent people were being killed – the army and the paramilitary forces could kill with perfect impunity. The poor people caught in the middle were trying to walk a very thin line. Any priest that wasn’t named as a communist was hardly doing his duty. If you said it was unjust to kill, you were a communist. If you questioned the status quo in any way whatsoever, you were a sympathiser and a communist.”
FR SINNOTT BECOMES animated when discussing his work at the school for children with special needs he founded 12 years ago. He hopes that the publicity surrounding his kidnapping and release will eventually subside so that he can get on with his work there and with an inter-faith initiative that brings together Muslim and Christian clergy. The Mindanao authorities have insisted that two armed guards are posted outside his home from now on, with another accompanying him at all times.
“I hope that will gradually fade out because I could not see myself continuing my work with an armed guard alongside me. That seems a contradiction in terms,” says the man known to locals as Fr Mick.
This week negotiations between Manila and the MILF appeared to gain momentum, with Malaysian interlocutors talking of a deal being struck by next April. Like many in the region, Fr Sinnott remains skeptical. “You would hope and pray that this situation can be resolved, but realistically it’s difficult to see how that can happen... When I heard the ideological lectures from my guards about their children and grandchildren fighting until they achieve independence, it gave me a sense of foreboding and made me wonder what hope do we have of peace in Mindanao.”
