Heart of terror

The Philippine government, says Abraham Idjirani, should rail against Malaysia’s act of haling eight of his boss Jamalul Kiram’s followers to court for terrorism and muster all its resources to come to their aid. At least that’s what he said earlier. His boss would later disown the accused—not unlike Simon before he became Peter—saying they were not his men. In fact, they were not Filipinos but Malaysians.

“We condemn this terroristic act of Malaysia,” Idjirani said at first. “In the first place, these (accused) Filipinos, if indeed they were involved, were just defending their rights…. Sabah belongs to the sultanate and the Filipino people and Malaysia is just the administrator. They are only occupants…. We are concerned that eight fellow Filipinos are now being accused of an offense that carries a penalty of death. That’s illegal. It is usurpation of powers of the Sultan of Sulu.”

They will, said Idjirani, go all the way to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to assert this.

I agree completely, government should do everything in its power to stay the hand of death hovering above the heads of the eight. Which it has already set about doing, on the assumption that they are Filipinos. But without condemning Malaysia’s response to the perpetrators, without threatening various acts of reprisal, if not war, over it. Rising only to protest Malaysia’s arguable excess, or plain savagery, in putting down the incursion, a campaign that has extended to pretty much every Filipino in Sabah. Indeed, a campaign that has unleashed Malaysia’s latent prejudice, if not downright hostility, against Filipinos in the rest of that country.

I agree completely, government should move heaven and earth to save the souls, preferably while still tethered to their bodies, of the accused in Sabah. But only in the same way that government moved heaven and earth to save the Filipino drug mules in China from being hanged. Jojo Binay, the second highest official of this country, was himself dispatched to the Middle Kingdom to plead for their lives. It did not help of course, the mules were executed anyway. But the effort was there. You cannot of course condemn or threaten war against a country that takes drug-pushing literally deathly seriously. Neither can you condemn or threaten war against a country that takes invasion equally literally deathly seriously.

Idjirani of course says they weren’t attempting to seize Sabah, they were attempting to reclaim it: Sabah belongs to them. Well, repeating it till kingdom come won’t make it so. Saying it till hell freezes over won’t make hell freeze over. That is precisely the point that needs to be proven. Even Jovito Salonga’s 1962 statement asserting the Philippines’ claim to Sabah, which defenders of Kiram’s horrendous misadventure keep quoting, was clear on the point: That claim had to be proven by law and diplomacy. Not by outright seizure. Not by brazen occupation. Not by Jabidah, not by this raid.

In fact, there’s no small irony in the Kirams wanting to bring Malaysia’s apparent oppression of their followers to the ICJ on the ground that they were just “defending their rights,” Sabah being theirs. The ICJ ruled on that premise ages ago: Sabah does not belong to anyone except the people of Sabah. And the people of Sabah, after declaring themselves independent, joined Malaysia in 1963—quite freely, as determined first by a British commission and, after that was rejected by the Philippines and Indonesia, then by a UN Mission composed of Argentina, Brazil, Ceylon, Czechoslovakia, Ghana, Pakistan, Japan and Jordan.

The ICJ ruled on that point at that point: “Historic title, no matter how persuasively claimed on the basis of old legal instruments and exercises of authority, cannot… prevail in law over the rights of non-self-governing people to claim independence and establish their sovereignty through the exercise of bona fide self-determination.”

Same question: What the hell are you telling the people of Sabah by insisting that Sabah belongs to the Sultan of Sulu, that they have no business claiming independence, sovereignty or self-determination because they are, and will always be, subjects of a character straight from the Arabian Nights?

But what takes the cake is Idjirani, and the Kirams, suddenly discovering that their followers who roistered this mess in Sabah, leaving the real Filipinos there who were quietly going about their business before the Kirams and their followers did what they did to reap the whirlwind, are Filipinos too and are entitled to their government’s support and help. What takes the cake is their attempting to conscript this country into remonstrating or condemning everyone except themselves for the horror they themselves have unleashed.

What, they’re Filipinos too but they’d rather not inform us about, or ask our permission for, the batty thing they were about to embark on? Or if not us as a whole at least government, which is the official representative of the rest of us, in whose name they now claim to have done what they did? They’re Filipinos too, but they couldn’t care less what happens to their countrymen in Sabah and other parts of Malaysia, many of whom do not have papers, whom they’ve just subjected to a reign of terror by what they’ve done? They’re Filipinos too but they don’t particularly mind exposing the country to the scorn of the world—“bizarre” is how the Kirams’ incursion into Sabah is universally called—reinforced by some groups and individuals calling on the country to unite behind them?

You want to see terrorism, you don’t have to look far, you don’t have to look deep. Just look at the people who wreaked this, just look at what they’ve wrought.

That is the heart of terror.