Jolo
| Jolo | ||
|---|---|---|
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| Waters | Pacific Ocean | |
| Archipelago | Sulu Archipelago | |
| Geographical location | 5 ° 59 ′ N , 121 ° 8 ′ E | |
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| surface | 893 km² | |
| Residents | 530,000 594 inhabitants / km² |
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Jolo (pronounced “Holo”) is an 893 km² Philippine island with around 530,000 inhabitants as of 2005.
geography
It lies with the surrounding islands of the Sulu archipelago south of the Sulu Sea , between the southern Philippine island of Mindanao and the Malay Archipelago belonging island Borneo . The volcanic island is littered with numerous volcanic craters and cinder cones .
On Jolo lives a subspecies of the sika deer , the endemic found only on this island.
history
Jolo was once the center of a powerful sultanate. After the Spanish-American War , the Filipinos opposed the new colonial power from 1899. While resistance was broken in most of the country by 1903, it lasted on Jolo until 1916.
population
The inhabitants belong to the Tausug people . They are predominantly Muslim and accuse the Catholic government of the Philippines of discriminating against them. Mindanao State University is a major educational institution .
politics
On January 3, 1999, members of the Abu Sajaf threw hand grenades at a crowd waiting in front of a burning supermarket in the city: 10 people died and 74 were injured. The island became internationally known through the kidnapping of tourists from the Malay holiday island of Sipadan to Jolo by the terror group Abu Sajaf, which began in April 2000 . The mayor of the city of Jolo estimated that there are 20,000 rifles on the island alone.
Since mid-2003 there have been around 2,500 to 3,000 US Army soldiers on the island, hunting down the Abu Sajaf group .
Since Panama is no longer under direct US control, Jolo has been discussed as a possible location for a re-establishment of the infamous School of the Americas .
On August 9, 2007, according to the military, the bloodiest skirmishes between militant Islamists and soldiers in years broke out on the southern Philippine island of Jolo.
20 people died in a bomb attack on the Cathedral of Our Lady on Mount Carmel in January 2019.
Web links
- Jolo in the Global Volcanism Program of the Smithsonian Institution (English)
- 19th century picture of the harbor