COTABATO CITY (June 15, 2026) — Nabighani ang marami sa Metro Manila sa kalidad ng mga textile products ng Bangsamoro region at mga disenyo ng mga fashion attires ng regional designers, gamit ang mga ito, na tampok sa Manila International Fashion Week (MIFW) Season 7 na ginanap nitong Biyernes ng nakalipas na linggo, June 12, sa Okada Manila Hotel sa Manila.

Ang mga nagpapalakad mismo ng mga regular na Manila International Fashion Week activities ang nagkumbinsi sa mga officials ng Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao na lumahok sa isang dedicated show para sa mga traditional fabrics mula sa BARMM at mga fashion designs gamit ang mga ito.

Mismong si Minister Farserina Mohammad, ng Ministry of Tourism, Trade and Industry-BARMM, ang nanguna sa mga preparasyon na kaugnay ng partisipasyon ng BARMM government sa MIFW Season 7 sa Okada Manila Hotel, kung saan ibinida ang matagal ng tanyag na mga traditional handwoven fabrics mula sa autonomous region — ang Tepo ng Tawi-Tawi, ang Pis Syabit ng Sulu, ang Tennun ng Basilan, ang Langkit ng Lanao del Sur at ang Inaul ng Maguindanao del Sur at Maguindanao del Norte.

Sa espesyal na presentasyong Modest Fashion: Experience BARMM sa Okada Manila Hotel, itinampok ng MITT ng Bangsamoro government ang natatanging indigenous fabric industry ng autonomous region.

Sakop ng autonomous region ang mga probinsya ng Maguindanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu at Tawi-Tawi at ang mga lungsod ng Lamitan, Marawi at Cotabato.

Kabilang sa mga lumahok sa June 12 fashion event sa Okada Manila Hotel ang dating mga congresswomen na sina Bai Sandra Sema ng first district ng noon ay solo Maguindanao province na nahati na sa Maguindanao del Sur at Maguindanao del Norte, at si Ruby Maquiso Sahali ng Tawi-Tawi.

Ang mga dating kongresistang sina Sema at Sahali ay popular sa kanilang masigasig na suporta sa mga programang naglalayong mapalago ang mga indigenous crafts sa BARMM at maka-konekta ang mga producers nito sa mga traders sa ibat-ibang rehiyon sa bansa at sa abroad.

Ipinakita sa naturang show ng mga regional designers ang mga fashion attires na kanilang disenyo, gamit ang handwoven fabrics na produkto ng BARMM.

Ayon kay MTIT Minister Mohammad, higit pa sa isang fashion presentation ang paglahok ng BARMM sa prestihiyosong fashion event dahil naipakita sa mga taga labas ng BARMM ang mga traditional fabrics na gawa sa autonomous na export grade ang quality.

Ayon kay MTIT Minister Mohammad, kabilang sa mga trade agenda ng kanilang ministry ang mapakilala sa international market ang mga handwoven fabrics na produkto ng autonomous region na itinuturing na isa sa mga cultural trademark, o racial identity, ng mga residente sa limang probinsya at tatlong lungsod na sakop nito. []

KORONADAL CITY (July 13, 2026) — Two Army divisions in Mindanao have dispatched more soldiers to the tremor-stricken South Cotabato and Sarangani provinces and in General Santos to support the disaster impact mitigation efforts of local government units in the three areas, officials said on Friday, June 12.

Additional personnel of the 105th Infantry Battalion of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division and the 12th Forward Service Support Unit, which is based in Camp Siongco in Datu Odin Sinsuat town in Maguindanao del Norte, where the 6th ID’s headquarters is located, are supporting multi-sector, inter-agency public service operations in South Cotabato and Sarangani provinces and in General Santos City.

Appreciation

South Cotabato Gov. Reynaldo Tamayo, Jr., chairperson of the Regional Peace and Order Council (RPOC) 12, told reporters on Friday that he and members of the multi-sector council appreciate the prompt dispatch to the three areas of rescuer-soldiers by 6th ID’s commander, Major Gen. Jose Vladimir Cagara.

Soldiers from the 10th ID have also been helping the LGU of General Santos City address humanitarian concerns besetting all of its barangays, worst hit by Monday’s 7.8 Magnitude earthquake that displaced no fewer than 300,000 families in the area and in towns in South Cotabato and Sarangani provinces.

Major Gen. Alvin Luzon, commander of the Army’s 10th Infantry Division, and his subordinate-officers in their anti-terror Task Force GenSan are also directly supporting the relief operations in General Santos City of local executives, according to Tamayo, speaking as RPOC 12 chairperson.

“We are very grateful to both the 6th ID and the 10th ID for helping the communities in Region 12 bounce back from this disaster,” Tamayo said.

“We also appreciate so much the efforts of the Police Regional Office 12 and the Bureau of Fire Protection 12, also both actively helping local government units in tremor-affected areas address humanitarian concerns besetting the local communities,” Tamayo said.

Medical care for tremor victims

Local executives in South Cotabato province are together extending extensive medical care, since before dawn Tuesday, to 334 constituents who sustained injuries, many of them still unsafe, caused by the 7.8 Magnitude tremor that jolted Central Mindanao on Monday, June 8.

South Cotabato, whose territory covers 10 municipalities and Koronadal City, is one of the four provinces in Region 12, whose center is less than an hour away from General Santos City via overland travel.

Up to 513 buildings and other infrastructures in General Santos City, in the provinces of Sarangani and South Cotabato and in its provincial capital, Koronadal City were damaged by Monday’s earthquake, according to official reports by local government units in the four areas.

The earthquake also affected the adjoining southern Regions 9, 10, 12 and the entire Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Officials of the Office of Civil Defense 12, the BFP 12 and the PRO 12 separately told reporters that in Central Mindanao’s adjoining South Cotabato-Cotabato-Sultan Kudarat-Sarangani-General Santos City (Soccsksargen) area alone, 35 residents died as a result of Monday’s earthquake, based on reports, as of late Wednesday, by emergency responders in the field.

Officials also clarified that 20 of the fatalities in the region are residents of Glan and Malapatan towns in Sarangani. The epicenter of Monday’s earthquake that hit the Soccsksargen area is in the seaside Maasim town in Sarangani.

Officials also confirmed on Thursday that 647 individuals in Soccsksargen were hurt during and after the two-minute earthquake, hit by debris from damaged buildings and other structures that collapsed then.

South Cotabato affected too

Rolly Aquino, chief of South Cotabato’s Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management office, told reporters on Thursday that, based on reports by the local government units in the 10 towns and in Koronadal City that are under their jurisdiction, Monday’s earthquake left 334 residents in the province injured.

Tamayo and his constituent-mayors are together attending to the needs of the 334 injured villagers from across the province.

“The office of our governor had also extended initial assistance to the families of the three residents of the province who died as a result of last Monday’s powerful earthquake,” Aquino, a registered nurse, said.

Aquino said their field emergency response teams, backed by policemen and soldiers, are still searching for an ethnic T’boli villager underneath the tons of soil and rocks, loosened by the earthquake and cascaded from a hillside towards a flatland in T’boli town.

Tamayo had told reporters that, as of Thursday, engineers under his office and in the local government units in the province placed at P365 million their estimate of the cost of the buildings and other structures in their province that the earthquake destroyed.

Photo shows soldiers from the 6th ID sifting through a spot, somewhere in Sarangani province, where tons of soil that cascaded from a hill, loosened by strong tremor last Monday, crashed. []

COTABATO CITY (June 12, 2026) — Another group of Muslim and Christian local executives, led by the mayor of this city, joined on Friday, June 12, the Bangsamoro Federalist Party, one of the 16 that are now gearing up for the first ever September 14, 2026 parliamentary polls in the autonomous region.

The now second term Cotabato City Mayor Bruce Matabalao, members of the city’s Sangguniang Panglungsod, among them its presiding chairperson, Vice Mayor Johair Madag, and councilors Anwar Malang, who is a human rights lawyer, the longtime broadcast journalist Florante Formento, Abdillah Lim and Datu Raiz Sema took oath then as members of the Bangsamoro Federalist Party, in the presence of its top officials, during a symbolic rite at a function facility here.

Sema is the son of Bangsamoro Labor and Employment Minister Muslim Sema. His brother Datu Zawawi, incumbent barangay chairman of Tamontaka in Cotabato City, also pledged political allegiance, beside him, during Friday’s mass oathtaking of new Bangsamoro Federalist Party members.

The Sema siblings had told reporters that they have the permission of their patriarch, who is chairman of the central committee of the Moro National Liberation, to join the Bangsamoro Federalist Party. The MNLF has representatives in the 80-seat parliament of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The Bangsamoro Federalist Party, the Serbisyong Inklusibo, Alyansang Progresibo, the Bangsamoro Party of the MNLF, the Bangsamoro People’s Party, which was founded by Basilan Gov. Mujiv Hataman, are the four largest and most well-organized, from among the 16 regional partisan blocs that have candidates for the BARMM parliament during the September 14 regional electoral exercise.

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front also has its United Bangsamoro Justice Party, which has many members who had left in recent months and joined the Bangsamoro Federalist party, whose president, Tomanda Antok, is member of the region’s lawmaking body.

Matabalao and Madag separately said, after they were sworn in by Antok as new members of the Bangsamoro Federalist Party, that they decided to join the group for its extensive peace and development objectives, one of which is to foster sustainable development by fostering solidarity among Muslim, Christian and the non-Moro indigenous communities in the autonomous region.

The two officials were running mates, both candidates of the MILF’s UBJP, during the May 12, 2025 local elections.

“I officially, politely resigned from my membership with the United Bangsamoro Justice Party to join the Bangsamoro Federalist Party,” Matabalao pointed out in a message during Friday morning’s event in uptown Cotabato City.

Matabalao’s office covers 37 vote-rich barangays in Cotabato City, home to mixed Muslim, Christian and non-Moro ethnic Teduray communities.

More than half of the 117 mayors in BARMM and provincial officials in its five provinces, Maguindanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi, have joined the Bangsamoro Federalist Party during separate caucuses in the cities of Marawi and Zamboanga City last month.

“All of them fully understood that as a political party, we don’t have animosity with other political parties in the Bangsamoro region. We are promoting cultural, religious and political solidarity among the communities in the autonomous region,” said parliament member Naguib Sinarimbo, chairman of the Bangsamoro Federalist Party’s Cotabato City chapter.

Photo shows Cotabato City officials, led by Matabalao, now in his second term as mayor, when they took oath together as members of the Bangsamoro Federalist Party. []

COTABATO CITY (June 10, 2026) —Moro readers were elated learning that the non-profit Catholic tabloid circulating in Central Mindanao, promoting since the 1940s interfaith solidarity among Muslim, Christian and indigenous communities, was cited as the country’s best edited community newspaper by the Philippine Press Institute (PPI) on Thursday, June 4.

The Panay News, also a community paper in the Visayas, also received the same award from the PPI, radio reports in Cotabato City on Tuesday stated.

The Mindanao Cross, owned by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) congregation, which circulates every Friday here and in nearby towns in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and in Administrative Region 12, is touted as the country’s longest-running community newspaper, being published weekly since 1948.

The OMI congregation, whose main pontifical base is in the Vatican City in Rome, has missionary and humanitarian activities, since the 1930s, here and in what are now large provinces in Central Mindanao, in Sulu in Region 9 and in Tawi-Tawi in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Drema Quitayen-Bravo, manager of the also so old Station DXMS in this city, also owned by the OMI congregation, personally received the PPI’s best edited community newspaper citation for Mindanao Cross during a symbolic rite on Thursday last week at the Hotel Lucky Chinatown in Binondo, Manila.

“We are happy with that recognition that the Mindanao Cross got from the Philippine Press Institute. We have been seeing for so many years now how it has been struggling to propagate ecumenism and the need for unity among Christians and Muslims in community peace and development initiatives,” said BARMM’s health minister, the physician-ophthalmologist Kadil Sinolinding Jr., a Muslim Maguindanaon.

Sinolinding, also a member of the 80-seat BARMM parliament, and his two colleagues in the regional lawmaking body, Ishak Mastura and Zulfikar-Ali Bayam, both Moro datus, separately told reporters on Tuesday that the Mindanao Cross deserved the PPI award owing to its being so careful in the composition of its reports, presented via conflict-sensitive wordings as part of its editorial board’s peacebuilding goals.

“The reports of Mindanao Cross are well edited and have good insights educating readers that peace and unity among the local culturally-divergent communities is very important,” Mastura said.

Mastura’s patriarch, the lawyer Michael Mastura, who had served as congressional representative of the still undivided Maguindanao in the 1990s and had supported the government’s peace overture with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front that resulted in the creation in 2019 of the BARMM government, was a former columnist of the Mindanao Cross.

Bayam said elders of their clan in Kabuntalan, Maguindanao del Norte and in Cotabato City are readers of the Mindanao Cross since he was still a primary school pupil.

The non-stock and non-profit Mindanao Cross was established after World War 2 by foreign and Filipino OMI priests in Cotabato City, led by their figurehead in the city then, the French-Canadian Oblate missionary Gerard Mongeau. Its first issue came out on February 6, 1948, produced by a printing press in Cotabato City.

The military and police stopped its publication for a period after the country was placed under martial law in 1972 by President Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. for its tough stance on his intolerance of political opposition. The Mindanao Cross was permitted to resume weekly publication only after its publisher signed a written commitment not to publish articles opposing the military rule in the country then.

An ethnic non-Moro Teduray member of the BARMM parliament, Ramon Piang, Sr., former mayor of the predominantly Teduray upland Upi town in Maguindanao del Norte, said he is grateful to the Mindanao Cross for its continuing focus on the need to preserve their culture and tradition as an indigenous community in Central Mindanao and on how they are struggling to foster peace and sustainable development in their state-recognized ancestral domains.

“For that, we are grateful,” Piang said. []

KIDAPAWAN CITY (June 7, 2026) — Players from the Muslim, Christian and non-Moro indigenous communities in Cotabato province, some of them identified with two erstwhile Moro rebel fronts, participated in basketball and volleyball tournaments this week, intended to foster cultural and religious understanding among them.

The ballgames, organized by the office of Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza, was also meant to encourage high school and college students in the 17 towns in the province and in the 40 barangays in its capital, Kidapawan City, to focus on sports for “leisure and fame” rather than getting hooked to illegal drugs.

Officials of the Police Regional Office 12, including their regional director, Brig. Gen. Alan Manibog, Army Major Gen. Alvin Luzon, commander of the 10th Infantry Division, and his counterpart in the 6th Infantry Division, Major Gen. Jose Vladimir Cagara, assured on Saturday, June 6, to support all youth sports competitions Talino-Mendoza’s office may possibly organize soon for young enthusiasts she wants to protect from illegal drugs and unite in the spirit of ecumenism

The 10th ID covers Kidapawan City, where the Cotabato provincial capitol is located, and nearby upland towns, some of which are located near the border of Maguindanao del Sur.

The 6th ID has units in Carmen, Cotabato and in towns in the 1st and 3rd districts of the province, close to Cotabato City, the capital of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Radio reports on Saturday, June 6, stated that athletes from Magpet, Mlang, Antipas and Carmen towns and in Kidapawan City have won the basketball and volleyball games organized by officials under the office of Taliño-Mendoza in the provincial capitol.

Taliño-Mendoza, now in her second term as governor, is a staunch supporter of the anti-narcotics campaign of PRO 12 and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency 12.

Talino-Mendoza, who is presiding chairperson of the Regional Development Council 12, is also known for her involvement in various programs complementing Malacañang’s peace overtures with the Moro National Liberation Front and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front that have separate peace compacts with the national government.

There are eight newly-created Bangsamoro municipalities, grouped as the Special Geographic Area (SGA) under the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao inside Cotabato province, which is in the territory of Administrative 12.

Taliño-Mendoza’s office still has humanitarian activities in all of the eight towns in the Bangsamoro SGA despite being no longer under her jurisdiction since 2019 after local residents, residing in 63 barangays in the area, originally under towns in Cotabato province, voted in favor of the inclusion of their communities into BARMM government’s coverage during a plebiscite then.

COTABATO CITY (June 4, 2026) — The vice governor of Basilan and the chief minister of the Bangsamoro region have agreed to continue cooperating in sustaining the peace now spreading around the island province, declared early this year as totally cleared from the presence of the Abu Sayyaf terror group.

Basilan Vice Gov. Hadjiman Salliman, who had served as governor of the province for three consecutive terms before he was elected vice governor during the May 12, 2025 elections, is the presiding chairperson of their Sangguniang Panlalawigan, or Basilan’s provincial board, which legislates ordinances enforceable in the two cities and 11 towns in the province.

Salliman had told Bangsamoro Chief Minister Abdulrauf Macacua, during their meeting in this city on Monday, June 1, that he and members of their Sangguniang Panlalawigan are committed to help the regional government of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao achieve its peace and community-empowerment agenda for Basilan’s 11 towns and two cities.

While at the Bangsamoro regional capitol in Cotabato City on Monday, Salliman and Macacua agreed to expand the partnership of Basilan’s Sangguniang Panlalawigan and the BARMM government in keeping the peace now in all areas in Basilan.

The police and military jointly declared Basilan early this year as totally free, liberated from the Abu Sayyaf terror group that once ruled with impunity in isolated areas in the province.

Macacua said the feat was achieved through the joint peace and security efforts of local executives, units in the province of the military’s Western Mindanao Command, the Basilan Provincial Police Office and leaders of the Abu Sayyaf who got reintegrated into the local communities after they surrendered, in batches, and reformed for good.

Basilan Gov. Mujiv Hataman, a former regional governor of the now defunct Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, which got replaced with a more empowered BARMM in 2019, had also amicably settled, through dialogues, more than 10 deadly “rido,” or clan wars, in the province since his election to office last year.

Macacua, figurehead of the 80-seat BARMM parliament, said he and officials of all agencies under him are grateful to Salliman and the members of their Sangguniang Panlalawigan and to Hataman, chairperson of the Basilan Provincial Peace and Order Council, for their renewed commitment to help push forward the regional government’s peacebuilding initiatives in Basilan, one of the five provinces in the autonomous region.

BARMM also has three cities, Lamitan, Marawi and Cotabato, where its regional capitol is located.

“Cooperation in governance among all leaders in the autonomous region is a strong force that can help us achieve our common goal of fostering peace and progress in all five provinces and three cities in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao,” Macacua said.

The five provincial governors in BARMM, Hataman of Basilan, Mamintal Adiong, Jr. of Lanao del Sur, Ali Midtimbang of Maguindanao del Sur, Tucao Mastura of Maguindanao del Norte and Ysmael Ali of Tawi-Tawi each assured last month of their support to all programs of the BARMM government, aiming to boost peace and progress in the autonomous region, via interfaith and cultural solidarity among its Muslim, Christian and indigenous non-Moro residents.

Photo shows Salliman and Macacua sharing a light moment after their meeting in Cotabato City on Monday, June 1. [][][]