By Krizia Kaye Viray
GENEVA, Oct 25 2017 (IOM)

It was 32 degrees Celsius outside, a sunny day in the last week of August. Yet, I vividly remember getting the chills.

After setting off with colleagues from IOM, the UN Migration Agency Zamboanga sub-office to meet some of the conflict-displaced families in Zamboanga City on the island of Mindanao, Philippines, we made a detour to Barangay Santa Barbara, one of the communities directly caught up in the middle of the Zamboanga siege in 2013.

Our destination was IOM’s demo farm project supported by the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) where students are taught the basics of gardening, with the produce from the gardens used in local feeding programmes.

Just behind the demo farm was an inescapable, plaguing reminder of the siege. It was something that you didn’t expect to see on a school campus. We had just walked into a structure that veiled many haunting stories.

At first glance, you would never think this building was once part of a school. A safe space where children learn, play and pray. Now, the rooms before us bore nothing but brutal reminders of the siege. Clearly visible pockmarks where bullets and mortars had pierced through walls, blackboards and roofs abruptly stopped us in our tracks. I couldn’t help but imagine the horrors that had been perpetrated within this space.

There was no denying that this had indeed been ground zero of the 2013 siege.

Back then, the whole country had watched as an armed group attacked Zamboanga City. The resulting fighting between the group and government forces lasted for almost three weeks with more than 200 of the group killed and the rest detained. The Zamboanga siege also displaced more than 100,000 residents, creating a humanitarian crisis that has taken years to address.

At the onset of the siege, Santa Barbara Elementary School was taken over by the armed group which made it its base during the siege. The school became the place where they slept, ate and hid. Shockingly, it also became a killing ground.

Largely left untouched all these years and lined up on one side of the room, were discarded shoes covered in dirt and dust. What appeared to be a small eerie detail, actually masked a horrific practice. These were the shoes of hostages who had been lined up and killed. The armed group would ask them to take off their footwear before being sent off to be killed. Later, it was revealed that some in the armed group would wear the shoes as if they were their own.

Standing on the balcony of the school, you cannot help but stare at the walls filled with different scribblings and messages.

After the siege ended and the school was freed of the armed group, sympathizers and even some hostages left their own scribblings on the walls. Profanities, curses, threats and warnings to anyone who would join the armed group were scribbled on the walls.

“The kids loved this school. The walls are painted with their favorite cartoons and princesses. But we knew refurbishing it would not erase the horrible things that happened here. So, we left it as it was,” said Daisie Ebrada, the school principal. “We’re happy that new buildings within the campus have been built and kids have now gone back to learning in a normal classroom setting,” she added.

As we leave this eerily disconcerting place, one last message written on the wall stirs that little bit of hope in us all. Although only three words followed by three exclamation marks, they provide a strong fillip amidst all the misery this place has witnessed.

These three simple words are testament to the resilience and optimism of the people in this siege-affected area.

I’m glad we didn’t miss them.

This article was written by Krizia Kaye Viray and photos by Julie Christine Batula, Media and Communications Division (Manila)