Sulu ‘royal army’ demands to stay in Sabah
Agence France-Presse, The Star-Asia News Network
Malaysian policemen check a vehicle along the main road near Lahad Datu in eastern Sabah Thursday. Malaysian security forces in Borneo surrounded armed intruders believed to be from Mindanao and sought to persuade them to leave peacefully. AP/BERNAMA NEWS AGENCY
CENDERAWASIH, Lahad Datu, Sabah—The standoff continues between Malaysian authorities and an armed group of 100 Filipinos claiming to be members of the royal armed forces of the Sultanate of Sulu, authorities said.
The standoff with the armed men from Mindanao has sparked one of the biggest security scares in recent years in eastern Sabah state, which is less than an hour by speedboat from the southern Philippine provinces.
The armed group is forcing out villagers from Kampung Tanduao, demanding that they should not be expelled from Sabah, an area that the Philippines, on behalf of the heirs of the Sultanate of Sulu, has been trying to reclaim from Malaysia.
Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters Thursday the gunmen had been cornered by security forces near the small coastal town of Lahad Datu.
The area was once controlled by the former Islamic sultanate of Sulu and has a history of incursions by armed Filipino Muslim groups.
He said security forces were in control and negotiating with the group, some of whom were armed with an assortment of weapons.
Malaysia’s national police chief Ismail Omar was quoted as saying the militants had declared themselves followers of “a descendant of the Sultan of Sulu.”
Ismail, quoted on the website of The Star newspaper, said the group demanded to be recognized as the “Royal Sulu Sultanate Army” and insisted that as subjects of the sultanate, they should be allowed to remain in Sabah.
“They have made known their demands while we have told them that they need to leave the country,” the police chief was quoted as saying, adding that negotiations with the group were still under way.
The demands were made during negotiations over the past 48 hours with emissaries who had asked the group to surrender and leave the area peacefully.
The Star said that the emissaries were given until noon Friday to resolve the standoff but the gunmen insisted they would only leave the village if their demands are met.
They had also purportedly raised the Philippines flag in the area.
People shop in a market in Lahad Datu in Sabah. Contributed photo by Orlando Maliwanag
According to local villagers, one group of gunmen had arrived in three boats mounted with machine guns and landed in Silabukan while another landed in Sungei Merah close to Kampung Tanduao last week.
Police were then notified about the presence of the gunmen.
Some villagers had also claimed that one group of about 30 gunmen armed with M16 rifles had entered Kampung Tanduao in Felda Sahabat 20 scheme and converged at the home of a man known as Ahmad Bom or Mat Bomb.
The villagers, who declined to give their names for fear of reprisal, said that most of the gunmen were in military fatigues while others were in robes when they entered Kampung Tanduao.
According to them, Ahmad was arrested by the police in the early 1990s for allegedly attempting to throw a fish bomb at the Felda office here after failing to settle a land dispute, thus earning him the nickname.
He was also accused of being involved in fish bombing but was never charged.
The villagers claimed that Ahmad’s son had gone to Bongoa in the nearby province of Tawi-Tawi in Mindanao recently to seek help from the armed men to claim back his family’s ancestral land within the Felda Sahabat scheme.
The Sulu sultanate, first founded in the 1400s, was once a regional power center, controlling islands in the Muslim southern Philippines and parts of Borneo including Sabah until its demise a century ago.
Much of the eastern part of Sabah is being claimed by the Philippines as part of the Sultanate of Sulu that was leased to the British North Borneo Company in 1878. Great Britain transferred Sabah to Malaysia in 1963, which according to the Sultanate of Sulu was a violation of the Sabah Lease of 1878.
Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman Raul Hernandez has said Manila was in touch with Malaysia over the case. With INQUIRER.net and Associated Press
I think its better we allow these people to stay and not chase them out. These are experienced war mongers and they are heavily armed, plus they are not afraid to die. Our panglima2 perang in UMNO and Perkasa will be no match.
ReplyDeleteAs Malaysians, our only experience in battle is beating up our Cambodian/Indonesian maids not going face to face with battle hardened gunmen.
sabah belongs to philippines! get lost malaysia!!!
ReplyDeletePak Hussein,
ReplyDeleteI am speaking as a retired military officer who knows a bit about how military operations should be conducted in an event of an external threat or aggression.
The Lahad Datu incident is to my mind a clear example of an incursion by external armed elements. That being so, the correct action was to adopt a military option, not a political one. In the first instant, I do not know how were they able to incurse without being noticed. This itself calls for a thorough investigation and the blame must stop at those who are tasked to protect our shoreline.
Now it has been more than two weeks and with no solution in sight. Just imagine, we already have on our shores about 100 armed foreign elements whom our political masters claimed are neither terrorist or militants. I just simply do not understand how politicians defines a terrorist and militants. Are they to start shooting and killing people and it will only be then that they be called terrorist and militants?
My concern is that if they were able to land 100 armed
men onto our shores unnoticed, what is stopping them from incursing another 100 more? And I believe that is what will happened if this incident is not resolved quickly. With that number of armed men, this will pose a difficult problem for the authorites to solve.
From the military point of view, a well trained group of even 100 armed men will require substantial resources in men, material and equipment of the three services of the Armed Forces. My question would then be.......is our Armed Forces ready and able to undertake a military option, if ordered to? I would like to leave this to be answered by the experts.
Dato Arshad,
ReplyDeleteGlad to see your comments here. Was wondering what happened when you stopped writing on your blog for so long. Pray that you will always be in good health. To you too, Pak Hussein.
God bless both of you.