A leftist farmers’ group in the Philippines has sought the help of Hollywood star Angelina Jolie to expose the plight of thousands of people displaced by the military’s anti-insurgency campaign, the group’s leader said.

Willy Marbella, secretary general of the Farmers’ Movement in the Philippines, said the group has asked the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) to dispatch Jolie to Manila to raise awareness of the problems of internally displaced people.

“We are asking the UNHCR . . . to look into this and send Angelina Jolie to see the real situation of the internally displaced people in the country,” he said in a statement.

Marbella said his group believes that Jolie’s intervention will be a great help in bringing to the international community the plight of local refugees in the Philippines.

Marbella cited Jolie’s successful intervention in Darfur that prevented the genocide of children and women caught in the armed conflict there. Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos have been forced to abandon their homes in the provinces due to military operations and clashes between government troops and communist and Muslim rebels in the countryside.

 

A Unicef-funded study released earlier said that women and children displaced by armed conflicts have suffered serious physical and mental illnesses.

Communist rebels have been fighting the Philippine government since the late 1960s, while Muslim guerrillas have been waging a separatist struggle in the country’s strife-torn southern region of Mindanao since the early 1970s. 

But the military blames insurgents . “More than 10,000 peace-loving people are displaced every now and then due to the persistence of the insurgents in carrying out their armed revolution,” said Lt. Col. Ernesto Torres, the army’s spokesman.