Jambun: Sulu claim political fiction, Manila ploy

Bopim president says Mackasie Declaration of 1939 makes it clear that Manila never had territorial rights over Sabah.

KOTA KINABALU: A human rights advocate has warned that the Manila Government and the defunct Sulu Sultanate – declared defunct by the Madrid Protocol of 1885 – are misleading the people in the southern Philippines by resurrecting the fiction now and then that the sovereignty of Sabah does not rest with its people.

“The sovereignty of Sabah and Sarawak rests with their people and not with Manila, Beijing (Spratly Islands), Jakarta, Bandar Seri Begawan or Putrajaya.”

“The entire land area of Sabah is NCR (Native Customary Rights) and belongs to the Orang Asal.”

The Sabah Assembly, ventured Daniel John Jambun, can in fact pass a Motion cancelling the payment of the RM5,000 per annum to the nine heirs of the defunct Sulu Sultanate.

“When the Philippines Government wanted to be a party to the proceedings at the International Court of Justice at The Hague on the dispute between Malaysia and Indonesia over the Sipadan and Ligitan Islands, they were told that the matter doesn’t arise. Manila failed to get even observer status or to hold a watching brief.”

The Sipadan case, said Jambun who is the President of the UK-based Borneo’s Plight in Malaysia Foundation (Bopim), is the latest and clearest evidence that the Philippines does not have a leg to stand on in Sabah. “By using the term Sabah claim, Sulu and Manila have also created the illusion that the entire territory of North Borneo was being disputed.”

“By their own records, Sulu claims that it used to exercise the ‘right’ to collect toll along the waterways in the southern half of the Eastern Sabah Security Zone (EssZone) and further claims that Brunei handed it the ‘right’ to collect toll along the waterways in the northern half of EssZone.

“Brunei records, available at the archives in Bandar Seri Begawan and at the British Museum Library in London, show that the Sulu claim to the waterways in the northern half of EssZone is an outrageous lie.”

Jambun was commenting on media reports that the “new” Sulu Sultan, a Phugdfalon Kiram II, wants to hold an international conference to press his island’s so-called claim to Sabah.

He argued that having the so-called right to collect toll was not the same as having territorial rights. “In any case, it must be remembered that those who collected toll along some waterways in Sabah were nothing more than gangsters and common criminals preying on the people. It was not a government collecting toll but pirates extorting from the people.”

The bottomline, added Jambun, is that the defunct Sulu Sultanate cannot re-claim the so-called “right” to collect toll along the waterways in parts of Sabah. “Manila and Sulu also cannot claim that the latter had territorial rights in Sabah. It never had. The Mackasie Declaration of 1939 of the High Court of Borneo in Sandakan makes that clear.”

“The surviving nine heirs of the defunct Sulu Sultanate are only entitled to RM5,000 per annum for forgoing the right to collect toll.”

By the Mackasie Declaration of December 13, 1939 in the High Court of Borneo in Sandakan in Civil Suit No. 169/39, C F Mackasie, Chief Justice of Borneo, ruled that nine Plaintiffs were heirs of the defunct Sultanate of Sulu and were entitled to the yearly RM5,000 “cession” monies from the government in North Borneo.

The nine were listed as Dayang Piandao Kiram, Princess Tarhata Kiram, Princess Sakinur Kiram, Sultan Ismael Kiram, Sultan Punjungan Kiram, Sitti Rada Kiram, Sitti Jahara Kiram, Sitti Mariam Kiram and Mora Napsa.

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