Tag Archives: Malaysia
Tag: Malaysia
Malaysia's masterstroke that buried our Sabah claim
The "Jabidah massacre" commemoration at Corregidor March 18. Why did the MILF and the MNLF ignore it? This article answers that question.
The "Jabidah" question
Malaysia's leadership have been probably laughing their heads off reading about President Aquino delivering a speech in the event commemorating the alleged 1968 "Jabidah massacre" of Muslim youths initially recruited to form a commando unit codenamed to infiltrate Sabah.
It was the "Jabidah" allegations that hugged headlines for several days in 1968 that buried our claim to that territory in Borneo.
This was due to three of its consequences:
The publicity over the alleged massacre enraged thousands of Muslim youth to swell the ranks of the fledgling Moro National Liberation Front. Malaysia after "Jabidah" not only gave it substantial finances, but also even militarily trained its first officers and provided sanctuary to its leaders. President Marcos' Operation Merdeka ("Freedom") was intended to create a Tausug rebellion in Sabah. Instead, because of allegations of a massacre of Muslims by Marcos' army, it was a Muslim rebellion that broke out in Mindanao, aided by Malaysia.
The Malaysian involvement proved to be crucial to the MNLF's strength that by 1976 Marcos declared that the only way to end the insurgency is to give up the Sabah claim so that Malaysia would stop its crucial support of the secessionists.
In the public consciousness, the allegation of such an atrocity as a "Jabidah massacre" was tightly linked to the Philippine claim to Sabah. Indeed writers who have been passionate in claiming a massacre occurred expectedly denigrated the claim as merely due to "Marcos expansionist tendencies." It therefore became an unpopular agenda to champion. Since 1968, no politician would touch with a ten-foot pole our Sabah claim. That attitude ended only as a result of the bold but bloody expedition to Sabah recently by the Sulu of Sultan's fighters.Continue reading
Filed under: Manila Times Columns, PH in the World, PoliticsTagged with: Aquino, Benigno Aquino III, Eduardo Martelino, Jabidah, Malaysia, MILF, Sultan of Sulu
Ninoy did not expose the "Jabidah massacre," he even doubted it
Aquino delivering a privileged speech at the Senate
The Manila Times, March 19, 2013
The "Jabidah Question": First of Three Parts
Contrary to many accounts, senator Benigno Aquino Jr. did not expose the so-called "Jabidah massacre" 45 years ago today, which the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) exploited to the hilt to rally Muslims to its secessionist cause.
What he revealed to the world, and asked for a stop to, was the clandestine plan of his archenemy president Ferdinand Marcos to train and send Muslim commandos to Sabah to organize a revolt against Malaysia, the first step for the Philippines to take over the territory.
This conclusion is incontrovertible based on the late senator's privileged speech on March 28, 1968 titled: "Jabidah! Special Forces of Evil?"
The speech is posted at the archives section of the official government website and at my personal website as an annex to this column.
That there was a Jabidah massacre has been mostly uncritically believed, as indicated in the following Wikipedia entry:
"The Jabidah massacre . . . refers to an incident in which members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines massacred a number of Moro Muslim recruits who were escaping their covert training to reclaim Sabah . . . It is widely regarded as having been the catalyst behind the modern Moro insurgencies in the Southern Philippines."
The entry continued: "Sources differ regarding the details, with the number of victims ranging from 14 to 68, and some sources assert that the massacre is a myth." The "some sources" it referred to consist solely of University of the Philippines anthropologist Arnold Molina Azurin who investigated the episode intensively in his book, Beyond the Cult of Dissidence.Continue reading
Filed under: Manila Times Columns, PoliticsTagged with: Benigno Aquino, Benigno Aquino III, Jabidah, Jr., Malaysia, Ninoy Aquino, Sultan of Sulu
Where is ASEAN?
Front page of a Malaysian newspaper March 11
With the death toll of Filipino Muslims killed in Sabah by Malaysian authorities rising to 62 and with reports of human rights abuses against our countrymen, where the heck is ASEAN?
Forgotten it seems is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, one of whose main purposes is to "promote regional peace and stability through abiding respect for justice and the rule of law in the relationship among countries of the region".
Ban Ki Moon, the secretary-general of the United Nationswhich consists of 193 member states last week issued a statement calling for "dialogue among all parties to end the (Sabah) conflict peacefully. He also urged "all parties to facilitate delivery of humanitarian assistance and act in full respect of international human rights norms and standards."
Why hasn't there been a similar statement – even just an innocuous one like "ASEAN is concerned over the fighting" — from ASEAN consisting of just ten member countries, whose two founders, the Philippines and Malaysia, are involved in this flashpoint in Southeast Asia?
Did our department of foreign affairs even ask ASEAN to persuade Malaysia not to throw its full, brutal force against the Sultan of Sulu's men who had dug in in Lahad Datu and to give the government more time to talk to them? Or did it just forget to ask ASEAN?Continue reading
Filed under: Manila Times Columns, PH in the World, PoliticsTagged with: Benigno Aquino III, Malaysia, Sabah, Sultan
An impotent yet arrogant President
The front page of The Borneo Post: Note the description, "Sulu terrorists."
The Manila Times, March 11 2013
THE horrific reports have started to trickle in: Muslim Filipinos being rounded up in Sabah, locked up with some without food, "treated like animals" according to eyewitness accounts, sadistically ordered to run and then shot like wild game.
Photos in Kuala Lumpur newspapers depict Muslim Filipinos—clearly unarmed— pinned down brutally by uniformed armed men. Malaysia has brought its entire military force to bear down on the Sulu sultan's men.
The Philippine ambassador to Malaysia and Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Jose Brilliantes— three weeks late in action though— were ignored in Sabah, their pleas to visit Filipinos detained there and for Malaysian authorities to allow our humanitarian ship dock at the port were not even given the courtesy of a reply.
Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto del Rosario stages a dramatic trip to Malaysia to ask its government to exercise "maximum tolerance" toward the Filipino Muslims who had holed out in Lahad Datu. Even while he waited for his plane, the Malaysians were deploying instead maximum force against the Filipinos there.
His trip turned out only justify the Malaysian onslaught against the Sulu sultan's men, as his counterpart reported that he agreed that the Filipino Muslims were terrorists. Del Rosario didn't say the Malaysian foreign minister lied, only that he was quoted: "Outof-context"—the worn-out excuse for officials trying to wiggle away from something they regretted saying.
We have a President impotent in handling the Sabah crisis. Worse, he and his spokesmen have even been issuing statements denigrating Muslim Filipinos who had dug in in Sabah in what they believe is their homeland.
Filed under: Manila Times Columns, PH in the World, PoliticsTagged with: Benigno Aquino III, Malaysia, Sabah, Sultan, Sultan of Sulu
Malaysian spokesman Dato Aquino?
"Is (Interior Secretary) Mar Roxas now the spokesperson for Malaysia (by claiming) that Malaysia will not talk to us? " angrily asked Sultan Sultan Jamalul Kiram 3rd, whose men led by the crown prince Raja Muda defied Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and President Benigno S. Aquino 3rd's ultimatum for them to leave Sabah, or else.
Kiram though should be also asking that question rather to Roxas' boss: Mr. Aquino, and I'm afraid the answer would be in the affirmative, so much so that Malaysia should confer on him one of its honorific titles that can be given to foreigners, like Dato.
"There will be no compromise; either they surrender or face the consequences," the Malaysian prime minister was quoted in The Borneo Post the other day. "Surrender now, without conditions, Aquino for his part announced.
Check out everything Aquino said since the crisis broke out in February 13 — and you can easily do this in this day and age through the Internet– and you will realize that he never made even the vaguest reference that the Philippines claims Sabah as its territory, and that is the root of the crisis.Continue reading
Filed under: Manila Times Columns, PH in the World, PoliticsTagged with: Aquino, Malaysia, Sabah, Sultan
Aquino throwing Sulu sultan's people to the wolves
As published in The Manila Times, March 1, 2013
Malaysian Home Minister inspecting his troops surrounding Filipino Muslims in Sabah
IF violence erupts in Lahad Datu town in Sabah, and the Sulu Sultan Jamalul Kiram 3rd's men are massacred, the blood will be on President Aquino's hands. His statements and those of his spokespersons have thrown the Muslim Filipinos standing their ground in Sabah to the wolves.Mr. Aquino should have emphasized publicly that they have a legitimate aim although their means to achieve these are inappropriate, at the very least, and would only weaken their cause.
Instead, the president and his spokespersons have been questioning their motives (that they are being used by saboteurs of the peace talks), that they are being financed by hidden powers, that their claim to Sabah is moribund, and they are violating the Constitution— not of Malaysia— but of the Philippines.Continue reading
Filed under: Manila Times Columns, PH in the World, PoliticsTagged with: Aquino, Kiram, Malaysia, Mar Roxas, MILF, MNLF, Sabah, Sultan of Sulu