The Philippine military on Thursday allowed some 1,300 indigenous people who were displaced by fighting between government troops and communist rebels to return home to their villages in troubled Mindanao.
The decision to allow the displaced villagers to go home was reached after a dialogue with government and military officials.
"It has been two months of living away from home. Finally we are going home. Hopefully, we will never have to leave again," said Jakilu Gumansil, a Banwaon tribesman.
Gumansil and his family are among some 200 tribal families who have been living in an evacuation center in the village of Balit, in San Luis town, Agusan del Sur province, over the past two months.
The villagers said they fled their mountain villages after soldiers and militiamen who were hunting communist rebels entered the communities and occupied schools, tribal halls and even churches.
The people claimed that the soldiers harassed the villagers and accused them of supporting the rebels.
While civilians have been permitted to return to their villages, it appears that soldiers will be staying put.
"We respect the rights of the civilians, but we will not leave their communities until we will be able to defeat the rebels," Colonel Norman Zuniga of the Army's 10th Infantry Division told ucanews.com.
He said it would be impossible for the military to leave communities in areas close to the bases of the communist New People's Army rebels.
At least three Banwaon children have already died in evacuation centers, due to sicknesses exacerbated by poor living conditions.
The case of the Banwaons in Mindanao was one of the cases presented at the meeting of the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact in Cambodia last week.
At the meeting, B'laan tribal leader Kerlan Fanagel reported instances where the military had allegedly forcibly recruited civilians from indigenous communities to join paramilitary groups.
Fanagel also accused the military of occupying schools, harassment, forcible displacement of people, killings, vilification of activists, threats and intimidation.
Meeting organizers said a summary of findings would be presented to the United Nations.
A spokesman for the Armed Forces of the Philippines welcomed such a move.
"That is actually a welcome development," said Colonel Romeo Brawner, spokesman of the military’s Eastern Mindanao Command.
"The military is not hiding anything,” said Brawner, who called the allegations "baseless".
Instead, Brawner claimed it was rebel groups who instigated the forced evacuation of civilians by warning them of “imagined massive operations” on the part of the military.