PHILIPPINES
By Macabangkit B. Lanto
The Philippine Daily Inquirer-June 21
It’s been a year since the Marawi war, and the resident-victims now fear what they call “attention fatigue”. They recall past disasters that hit the country when, after the initial attention, aid and donations, the national focus soon shifted away. They cite the disaster that struck Zamboanga city when the Moro National Liberation Front laid siege to the city, and national calamities like Typhoon “Sendong,” when public and government interest gradually ebbed away, affecting full rehabilitation.
While Marawi was a consistent headline item and media staple at the height of the war and immediately after it, events about it are now barely mentioned in reports, or are usually relegated to the inside pages. National concern for the emancipation of the evacuees from abject despair and untold suffering has been gradually eaten away by the latest global and national events.
Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/114070/welcome-bill-marawi#ixzz5J47hOpgC
First published in: The Philippine Daily Inquirer
