Duterte advises public not to go to Zamboanga yet due to terrorist threat
President Rodrigo Duterte said he would not recommend yet to the public to visit Zamboanga due to terrorist threat.
In a speech on Tuesday night in Pasay City, Duterte said the government was "lucky" that it found a solution to the Islamic insurgency involving the Moro National Liberation Front ( MNLF) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
"We are lucky that in the two revolutionary fronts of the MILF and the MN(LF), we were able to find a solution to give them what they wanted for after all it was just an issue of territory," he said.
However, he said if there is a place in Mindanao, which he did not want other people to visit yet, it is Zamboanga.
"But there is a certain place which I would not recommend to anybody to go there, not just as yet --- is Zamboanga," he said.
Duterte recalled an incident involving Europeans who went to Mindanao for bird-watching, but they were captured by the terrorist Abu Sayyaf and later on decapitated after ransom money was not paid.
He cited the presence of ISIS and the Abu Sayyaf in Zamboanga and nearby areas.
"And you know the Abu Sayyaf, they do nothing but to kill and destroy. It’s a very interp --- an interpretation which is so corrupt and would like to mean it to be what is in their head. That’s a mass insanity," Duterte said.
The nearby island provinces of Basilan and Sulu are considered as the strongholds of the Abu Sayyaf Group, which has been tagged as a terrorist organization by Europe and the United States for kidnapping and killing their nationals in the past. Celerina Monte/DMS
