Gun control in troubled Pikit launched
Local News • 14:30 PM Thu Oct 20, 2022
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By:
John M. Unson
Personnel of the Army’s 90th Infantry Battalion guard a route in an interior barangay in Pikit, North Cotabato. Maj. Gen. Roy Galido during PPOC meeting. (John Unson/6th ID
COTABATO CITY - Authorities have started a crackdown on loose firearms in Pikit town in North Cotabato where 27 people have been killed in deadly attacks since 2020.
The move was agreed by the police, the military and local executives during an executive committee meeting of the North Cotabato provincial peace and order council in Kidapawan City Monday.
Major Gen. Roy Galido, commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said Thursday they have deployed more soldiers in Pikit to help the local police restrain residents with firearms from roaming around.
Most of the recent killings in Pikit happened in barangays under the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
The BARMM has 63 barangays in different towns in Cotabato province, which is under Administrative Region 12.
“We have to put an end to this culture of violence in Pikit, a culture condoned by loose firearms in the hands of people who are involved in clan wars. Some of these gun owners are engaged in criminal activities,” Galido said.
Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Mendoza who presided over Monday's peace dialogue at the capitol in Barangay Amas in Kidapawan City, told reporters via Viber Thursday she will support the police and Army’s joint anti-loose firearm campaign in Pikit.
Mendoza said she is confident the 6th ID and its component-unit in Cotabato province, the 602nd Infantry Brigade, the police and the local government unit in Pikit will succeed in preventing a repeat of the recent killings in the area.
Pikit has been calm for more than a week now, after a grenade attack in the town proper early this month, an ambush incident that left three women wounded and the death of a security guard in a gun attack preceded by the two incidents.
There are members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front Pikit, some of them locked in bloody family feuds.
Mendoza said her office shall help the police and military reconcile feuding clans in the area.
Brig. Gen. John Guyguyon, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, said the PRO-BAR and the Region 12 police command are now coordinating on peace and security missions in Pikit.
Guyguyon said they shall maintain law and order in Pikit in coordination with the regional government of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.