Kris-Crossing Mindanao
Sabah past, present and future
By Noralyn Mustafa
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:34:00 07/21/2008
MANILA, Philippines - Sometime last month I received a copy of a two-page publication that looked like a newsletter with the masthead “Royal Sultanate News,” dated May 25, which apparently was published after a gathering of the Moro National Liberation Front in Davao City recently, called the “2nd MNLF Mindanao Leadership Summit Meeting 2008.”
After reading it I filed it among other documents on the sultanate, thinking it was just an addition to other materials that would probably be useful another day.
But then last Friday came the news of yet another shipload of halaw (deportees) from Sabah expected in Zamboanga City the following day—the story, as usual, highlighted by a brief description of the sufferings undergone by the deportees while in detention in a jail in Sabah, especially one about a child who acquired sores during his three-month ordeal.
That was when I recalled that the caption of one of the two photos in the newsletter gave the full name and title of the most recent sultan to come to public attention as “His Majesty Sultan Fuad Abdulla Kiram I, The Sultan of Sulu and The Sultan of Sabah, Head of the Sultanate and Head of Islam in the Sultanate of Sulu & Sabah.”
I was compelled to read the paper again.
The lead paragraph was extremely thought-provoking, to say the least, which is why I must quote it in full:
“HM SULTAN FUAD THE FIRST addressed an audience of over 150,000 valiant and loyal MNLF combatants and troops composed of Muslims, Highlanders and Christians from various parts of Mindanao to meet their undisputed leader and chairman Datu Hadji Maas Nur [MNLF chairman Misuari] on 24 May 2008 at the Rizal Memorial College in Davao City, Philippines. More than 50,000 MNLF troops marched on the streets of Davao City creating a spectacle that was never seen before (sic).”
What a spectacle that must have been indeed.
So bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I that I have to quote the publication almost in its entirety as I fail in any attempt to summarize it. The newsletter goes on to say:
“HM SULTAN FUAD THE FIRST stated that the Philippines was a Muslim dominion ruled co-jointly by the Sultan of Brunei and Sultan of Sulu prior to the arrival of Spanish invaders in 1521. Raja Lapu-Lapu who killed Magellan in 1521 on the island of Mactan was a Muslim prince together with Raja Sikatuna and Raja Sigala who executed a blood compact with Don Miguel Lopez de Legazpi. In 1570, de Legazpi aided by Spanish officers and 700 Cebuano mercenary army (sic) attacked Manila, the capital of Muslim Luzon, under the reign of Raja Sulaiman (the crown prince and the son of the Sultan of Brunei). In this battle, Raja Sulaiman was wounded and forced to flee to Brunei where he died…
“HM Sultan Fuad the First stressed that Sabah and Palawan were gifts by the Sultan of Brunei to the Sultan of Sulu in 1658 for quelling a massive rebellion on the island of Borneo that made Sabah and Palawan the properties of the Sulu crown since 1658 to this day. In 1878, Sabah was rented by HM Sultan Jamalul Ahlan Kiram (father of the grandfather of HM Sultan Fuad the First) to a British company with the provision that it cannot be transferred to any nation, company or person without the consent of the Sultan of Sulu…
“Datu Hadji Maas Nur said Sabah is not owned by Malaysia but by the people of the Sultanate of Sulu. He plans to bring the Sabah recovery issue to the International Court of Justice so that it can be resolved by peaceful means. Datu Nur asked the crowd, ‘What if Malaysia does not return Sabah to us, what are we to do?’ The reply was, ‘We will fight and we will go to war!’ But Datu Nur answered, ‘No…we will make peace. But, if we are provoked, we have the right to self-defense.’ He continued, ‘Malaysia has no right in (sic) Sabah as it is owned by the Sultanate of Sulu!’”
As of last count, there are eight proclaimed sultans of Sulu, each claiming to be sultan also of Sabah or North Borneo. There have been scores of shiploads of halaw, each ship carrying its miserable human cargo with its own stories of inhuman treatment at the hands of their Sabahan jailers.
With each shipload we waited with killing suspense for any statement, any word, from any of these sultans protesting the deportations, or at least the treatment of deportees forced out of what is supposed to be part of their homeland.
And especially from Misuari, because it was the Sabah issue, after all, that gave birth to the MNLF.
The silence has been not only deafening, but worse, thoroughly embarrassing.
Over the weekend the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) finally came to an agreement on the contentious issue of ancestral domain. In the proposed expanded Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao that will accommodate the MILF, Palawan, which historically belongs to the Sultanate of Sulu, will be included in the territorial parameters under the jurisdiction of the “Bangsamoro.”
First Luzon and the Visayas, then Sabah, then Mindanao, then the Spratlys, then Palawan and soon, Exxon-Mobil will be drilling for oil in the territorial waters of the Sultanate without so much as a “hello” to the people of the provinces of Sulu, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi, all historically part of the Sultanate, all three among the poorest provinces of this country.
The Sultanate of Sulu, acknowledged by the Spaniards in their maps as “La Sultania de Jolo” and the first organized government in this archipelago, is once more in grave peril.
Send in the clowns.
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