Pinoys to leave Sabah

From the Manila Standard Today (Feb 18): Pinoys to leave Sabah

Police set up meeting with ‘prominent figure’

Malaysian authorities on Sunday said the process of deporting the 100 Filipinos who crossed over to Sabah from Simunul Island in Tawi-Tawi to press their claim on the island had started as the negotiations were “over.”

Bukit Aman Internal Security and Public Order director Datuk Salleh Mat Rasid said the authorities were ready to deport the Filipinos.

“We are in the process of deporting them home,” Malaysia’s The Star quoted Salleh as saying.

Sabah Police chief Datuk Hamza Taib said the group would be deported “soon” but did not elaborate.

He said the Filipinos had asked for a meeting with a prominent figure before deportation.

Taib said the police were making concerted efforts to arrange the meeting. “We can’t say when they will be deported, but they have accepted it,” Taib told reporters in Felda Sahabat.

The Filipinos, led by Sultan Muhammad Faud Kiram, and claiming they were heirs of the Sultan of Sulu, had holed up at the seaside village of Tanduo after landing in the area on Feb. 12.

Their arrival resulted in a standoff with Malaysian authorities who urged them to surrender their weapons.

But the Filipinos on Friday refused to leave Lahad Datu, a coastal town in Northern Borneo, despite the appeals from Philippine and Malaysian governments as the standoff there entered its second day.

The Star on Sunday said police, army and maritime security forces had tightened their circle around the village within Felda Sahabat 17 after the negotiations stopped.
Salleh said Malaysia was not entertaining the Filipinos’ demand that they be recognized as the Sulu Sultanate army and not be deported from Sabah.

Salleh made his statement even as former Senator Ernesto Maceda on Sunday said the Philippines should now consider bringing its claim to Sabah before the United Nations because the people of the Sultanate of Sulu have a legitimate claim on it.

“Renewed government efforts is the only way to stop the followers of the Sultan of Sulu from taking up arms and invading Sabah to press their claim,” said Maceda, a former senator and ambassador to the United States and a candidate for senator of the opposition United Nationalist Alliance.

“The Philippine government should now seriously consider bringing its claim to the United Nations,” Maceda said.

“It has been neglected and sleeping for a long time. It’s time to act to regain what is rightfully ours.”

Maceda said the people of the Sultanate of Sulu had a legitimate claim to Sabah, noting that the British and Malaysian governments used to pay rent on Sabah to the Sultan of Sulu.

He said the Sultanate of Sulu ceded to the Philippine government its title and sovereignty to the President Diosdado Macapagal in 1962.

There are an estimated 150,000 Tausugs in Malaysia, most of them Malaysian citizens living in Sabah, while another 12,000 live in the Kalimantan provinces of Indonesia. There are about 900,000 Tausugs in Sulu province, the traditional territory of the Sulu sultanate.

The sultanate leased, in perpetuity, much of the eastern part of North Borneo to the British North Borneo Company in 1878 for 5,300 Mexican dollars a year, an amount continuously paid until 1963.

But the British turned over the territory, allegedly without the consent of the Sultan of Sulu, to the Federation of Malaysia on its creation in 1963.

A few years before the creation of Malaysia, the British and Malay governments purportedly held a survey on Borneo about the residents’ sentiments on joining the Malaysian federation, and that the supposed survey showed that most residents wanted to join the federation.

The survey was rejected both by the Philippines and Indonesia, which has also claimed ownership of northwestern Borneo, which is now the Malaysian state of Sarawak.

On Saturday, Armed Forces chief Gen. Emmanuel Bautista said the military will conduct more patrols on the Philippine borders with Malaysia to avoid aggravating the situation in northeasters Borneo.

http://manilastandardtoday.com/2013/02/18/pinoys-to-leave-sabah/