Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 61
In forceCabinet measureAn Act Establishing a Bangsamoro Memorial Marker and Eco-Park in Camp Abubakar, Municipality of Barira, Maguindanao Del Norte to Honor the Shuhada/martyrs of the Bangsamoro Struggle Who Gave and Devoted Their Lives for the Right to Self-Determination and Freedom of the Bangsamoro, Providing Funds Therefor, and for Other Purposes
A memorial marker listing names is built within a new eco-park. A management board sets the criteria for whose names appear, determines the land, runs a grievance mechanism, and must consult local communities so the site has their ownership.
Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Signed into law and operative unless later amended or repealed.
What this measure does
This builds a memorial to the dead of the Bangsamoro struggle, and it puts it inside a park.
The marker will carry a list of names — the shuhada, defined as those who gave and devoted their lives, directly or indirectly, in the armed struggle for self-determination and freedom. It stands within a new Bangsamoro Eco-Park at Camp Abubakar in Barira, landscaped and designed with structures and ornaments reflective of Bangsamoro culture and arts, and fitted out with a multi-purpose hall, a children's playground, parking, comfort rooms and wash areas, and access roads.
A Bangsamoro Memorial Management Board builds and runs it: chaired by the cultural heritage commission, with the public works, trade and tourism, education and environment ministries, the Darul-Ifta', the local government of Barira, and a representative from every province of the region. It sets the criteria for whose names appear, determines the land, monitors construction, must keep a grievance mechanism functional, and must consult and actively involve local communities so the site carries their ownership and cultural relevance. When the work is done the Board dissolves and hands everything to the commission.
₱15 million to start, with authority to take grants and donations — domestic or foreign — under a stated transparency duty.
Why it was proposed
To honor the fallen of a conflict that produced the government now legislating. The policy section reaches wider than that: unity and goodwill among all people, social justice, the right of indigenous peoples to keep their distinct identity alongside a Bangsamoro political one, and the right of the people to a balanced ecology.
Who it affects
- Families of the shuhada, for whom the question of whose name appears is not abstract.
- Residents of Barira, who gain a public park and a seat on the Board through their local government.
- Indigenous peoples, whose distinct identity the policy section expressly protects.
- Every province of the region, each seated on the Board.
- Visitors, for whom this is designed to be a usable place rather than only a monument.
Who would implement it
- Bangsamoro Memorial Management Board, which constructs, maintains and manages the site until turnover
- Bangsamoro Commission for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, which chairs the Board, acts as secretariat and takes over on completion
- Ministries of Public Works, Trade Investments and Tourism, Basic Higher and Technical Education, and Environment Natural Resources and Energy; the Darul-Ifta'; and the LGU of Barira
Funding
Carries an appropriation. ₱15,000,000 initial, with further funds carried in the annual appropriations of the cultural heritage commission. The Board may also accept grants, donations and contributions in cash or in kind from public and private entities, domestic and foreign, subject to transparency, accountability and reporting requirements.
What changes if it becomes law
- The names of the shuhada acquire a permanent public listing, with criteria for inclusion.
- Camp Abubakar becomes a landscaped public park as well as a memorial site.
- A time-limited board builds it, with every province and the host municipality represented.
- A grievance mechanism and community consultation are written into the Board's duties.
Raised during deliberations
No published record of the debate on this measure. Parliament’s journals cover sittings up to March 2023 only, and no committee report on it has been published.
What to notice
Camp Abubakar is the point. It was the Moro Islamic Liberation Front's principal camp, and its fall in 2000 is one of the fixed dates in the region's memory of the war. Building the memorial there rather than at a neutral site is a decision about whose account of the conflict the region is inscribing — and doing it as an eco-park, with a playground and a hall, is a decision to make the place ordinary and inhabited rather than solemn and closed.
Two provisions raise this above a commemoration act. Section 8(d) requires the Board to ensure the establishment and functionality of a grievance mechanism — one of very few in this whole registry, and here it matters, because the act's hardest question is whose names go on the marker. 'Directly or indirectly' is a wide definition, the criteria are left to the Board rather than fixed in law, and the final list goes to the Chief Minister. In a post-conflict society, a list of martyrs is contested by its nature, and a grievance route is the difference between a decision and a wound. Section 8(h)'s requirement to consult and actively involve local communities 'ensuring their ownership' does related work.
The policy section is worth reading for what it protects rather than what it commemorates: indigenous peoples' freedom to retain their distinct indigenous and ethnic identity *in addition to* their Bangsamoro political identity. That sentence sits in a law about martyrs of the Bangsamoro struggle, and it is careful to say that being counted in the region does not require being absorbed by it.