Tourist wounded, another missing near Mindanao

Press, 8 April 1987, Page 11

Tourist wounded, another missing near Mindanao

NZPA-Reuter Zamboanga, Philippines Extra troops have been sent to a remote area of the southern Philippines where a New Zealandborn man was shot by gunmen and a Frenchman was believed kidnapped. A military spokesman said the Frenchman, Richard Angeles, aged 37, went missing after he and a companion, Wade Fairley, aged 21, were attacked by gunmen on Sikabong, a tiny coral-sand island off the southern island of Mindanao. Mr Fairley, who was born in New Zealand but lives in Tamworth, New South Wales, was shot twice in the thigh on Saturday and later found unconscious on the beach by a fisherman. He is recovering in hospital. There was no trace of Mr Angeles, but his wallet was found lying on the seashore. The two tourists had arrived in the pirateinfested waters off Mindanao island aboard a yacht. The military said they had recovered the

boat. The regional commander, General Cesar Tapia, told reporters he believed that Mr Angeles had been kidnapped by Muslim rebels, and immediately ordered troops sent to reinforce 1500 soldiers stationed in the area. He blamed the Moro National Liberation Front, the largest Muslim rebel army, for the abduction. The charge was denied by a spokesman for the Muslim group. The military has blamed Moro rebels for the kidnapping of dozens of foreigners in the southern Philippines over the last decade. All of the victims were later freed unharmed, usually after a ransom was paid. The most recent was Mr Hans Kunzli, a Swiss tourist freed late last year after months in captivity. A Moro spokesman in Zamboanga denied that his army abducted the Frenchman — the second French national to be kidnapped in the area in a decade — and countercharged that the military itself had seized the man

to give it a pretext for strengthening its forces in the area.

"The military is in connivance with pirates who prey on tourists,” Mr Ustaj Zain Jali told Reuters.

A French Government official was kidnapped in the mid-70s and released after several weeks of Government negotiations with a Moro group.

Word of Saturday’s attack emerged as President Corazon Aquino’s Government and the Moro rebels prepared to resume weeks-old peace talks in Manila on rebel demands for autonomy.

The Moro leader, Nur Misuari, said from his base in the Sulu islands, near where the Frenchman disappeared, that the military was trying to scuttle six months of peace between his guerrillas and the Government.

"I am in possession of hard evidence regarding the pressures being exerted on Mrs Aquino by hawkish elements in the Government and outside,” he said.