By Roger
Pe
Business Mirror
April 19, 2018 issue
Until
March this year, I have never been to Sulu, particularly Tawi-Tawi, a remote group
of islands suffering from unfair travel advisories most of the time. Friends have told me, Sulu’s history and its sultanate (Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi) would
inevitably surface in any conversation, and the word “Kiram” would often be
associated with it.
True
enough, the name that always fascinated me, was casually mentioned in the van
that was to take us to our hotel. That heightened my curiosity. As soon as we
arrived at Rachel’s Place, a hotel I never knew existed in that seemingly lonely
planet, I was ready to ask more questions. But the dissonant voices in the
lobby reduced my queries to a mere thought balloon, lost in the din of voices
getting louder and louder as we headed back to our rooms. For a moment, I had forgotten
about “Kiram.”
When I was
in grade school, I remember how the Philippines’ claim to Sabah was a smoldering
issue. North Borneo was its old name, under the sultanate, and Federation of Malaysia was
still not born. It always exploded on the pages Manila Times and Philippine Free
Press, publications my mother partly distributed in my hometown.
I became
a voracious reader especially when copies of them remained unsold. Needless to
say, Sabah was a hot topic because the town was geographically akin to Borneo.
Sabah eventually
became part of Malaysia. The newly formed Federation of Malaysia had annexed it
in 1963 because of British connections, complex things and through a referendum
some people said it stage-managed. Sources said the "referendum" did
not involve the entire population of North Borneo at that time, but only
representative consultations. The UN mission report also noted that, "there
was no reference to a referendum or plebiscite in the request.”
The
Philippines would break diplomatic relations with Malaysia. The issue had remained
in the back burner ever since the three-nation ‘Maphilindo’ (Malaysia,
Philippines, Indonesia) group vanished into thin air. Malaysia had made strong
statements: “It does not recognize and will not entertain any claim, nor bring
the matter to the International Court of Justice even if the Philippines would.”
Fast
forward to 2013
The Sabah
standoff: Sultan Jamalul Kiram III, a descendant of
the Sultan of Sulu from 1568, ordered his family and followers to keep the
sultanate’s historic territorial claims to Sabah burning. His younger brother Esmail, and
about 200 followers intruded into Sabah’s coastal village of Lahad Datu.
At this point, my interest of wanting
to meet any of Kiram’s relatives was getting more intense. It heightened when a
cameraman brought by Department of Tourism to the trip, Angelo “Toto” Ancino,
my roommate, told me he had personally met Kiram’s daughter, Princess Jacel Kiram.
For days, I nagged him to death about Jacel.
I finally got an answer after a week. On March 3, 2018, at three o’clock in the
afternoon, I finally came face-to-face with her.
Meeting the Princess
Princess Jacel was wearing a hijab,
all smiles and charming when we shook hands. What struck me most was she enunciated
English words with crystal clear clarity and nary a regional accent. I almost
told her: “You should voice for radio commercials.”
I would describe Jacel with much
profundity but “normal” seems to be the better word. She is normal, yes.
Normal, if your definition of being one is someone who speaks about peace, equality,
and diversity is not an issue. She is intelligent, mild-mannered in her decorum throughout
our conversation.
Being a product of a religious inter-marriage, her clan celebrates
Muslim and Christians occasions, like Hariraya and Christmas traditions. In an
age when Christians and Muslims stand apart from each other on opposite sides
of a very huge divide, hers is a shining example of harmonious
co-existence. Beyond the differences, Jacel sees a common ground when it comes
to moral values and principles - charity, devotion and faith, just as how other
major world religions preach the same.
When she graduated from De La Salle University College of
Saint Benilde (she finished Bachelor of Artswith an Inter-Disciplinary Studies
degree) in 2002, her “The Sulu Sultanate’s
Genealogy And Its Relation To The Philippines’ Claim To Sabah” was declared Best Thesis.
The daughter of the late 33rd Sulu
Sultan Jamalul Kiram III has become an icon of peace, inter-faith, women
empowerment and social upliftment, livelihood and development of Muslims in the
Philippines, especially in Mindanao.
“I wish people would get rid of
their misconceptions about Muslims. We can co-exist,” she says. She laments
about many incidents in the city that are still causing her deep pain to the
point of being callous. Taxi drivers, for example, speed away and do not take
her and her fellow Muslims as passengers if they find out they are going to Maharlika
Village.
Her husband, Moh Yusop Hasan, a
Lieutenant Coronel in the Philippine Army echoes her sentiments: “Muslim
Filipinos had been branded as “bandidos” (bandits), pirates and other
unpalatable names for centuries. We should correct the many social injustices that
have been heaped on them. It’s about time that people erase the long-time propaganda that
they are “terrorists,” he says.
Jacel, herself, was branded a
“terrorist” by the Malaysian government when the Lahad Datu incident drew
headlines.“I am not a
terrorist. I am just fighting for what is
legally, historically and rightfully ours. This fight is not just my fight, but
Filipinos’ fight as well,” she exclaims.
“If am being
labelled as a ‘terrorist’ fighting for what is ours as Filipinos, let them. Let
history be the judge,” she says. She is sad about younger generations of
Filipinos who are afflicted with historical amnesia and have forgotten the
glorious past of the sultanate. She maintains that the 2013 events in Lahad Datu
were simply an assertion of our rights.
“The word ‘terrorist’
is the weapon of the weak against the strong, a defense mechanism of people who
make their own rules,” Hasan says. The real ‘terrorists’ are abusers. Muslim
people are kind. That’s the difference. They only lose their patience against
abuses. Lands were taken away from them. They could not fish from their own
seas and do not benefit from their own natural resources. There is widespread
inequality and wealth belongs only to a few,” he blurts out.
Jacel has attended many national and international events as a
speaker. Among them as head of a Philippine delegation and guest of honor to the
19th World Festival of Youth and Students in the World Federation of Democratic
Youth held in Sochi, Russia. She also went to China to celebrate the 600th Year
of Sulu-China Friendship, coinciding with the book launching of “Friendship Without
Borders,” in Guangxi. She then participated in a United Nations sponsored
conference on Drug Control Program held in UN Headquarters, Vienna, Austria. She
was also the Chairperson of People’s Coalition for Peace.
In the bigger scheme of things, Jacel says: “We should always
go back to history to get a better perspective,” she exhales, sounding like
exhausted because “much of our history is being distorted,” she says.
“Sana hindi na lang ako (I wish it should’ve not been me) so
people won’t think of me as biased,” she says. But she is optimistic, that history
will be corrected with regards to the Philippines’ territorial claim to Sabah.
While
historically, the Philippines has the right to reclaim Sabah, some people doubt
if it can recover it now. “Unless we are ready to go to war,” one Filipino
lawyer said.
“The best
way to reclaim Sabah is do it now. The government must have the will to do it. Not
giving up on our proprietary rights and fighting for what is due us are the
things to do. As far as Malaysia is concerned, skirting the issue and not
wanting to talk about it means only one thing: It does not own Sabah,” she
quips.
Malaysian point-of-view
In
“Another Brick In The Wall”, a Malaysian political party blog, the unnamed author
unleashes fire and brimstone: “The word ‘permanent lease’ means “it cannot be
reclaimed” and the words in the grant did not say lease but cede or give away
for a certain consideration, and that the grant for a ‘permanent lease’ meant
giving away Sabah.”
Raymond
Tombung in his article in Free Malaysia Today said: “The Sabah claim will
continue to be raised by the Philippines and Sulu as it is powerful and emotive
international issue which many leaders from Manila will find convenient to
bleed for political mileage. And the many “sultans” in Sulu will continue to
cast their hungry eyes at Sabah, considered to be “the last gold coin” and
aspire, albeit hopelessly, to try and achieve the impossible.”
Tombung
continues: “If Sulu, by a very long shot, gets back Sabah, will it be able to
pay Malaysia all the billions utilized to develop it since 1963? Sulu cannot be
so arrogant and shameless to think that it can simply and freely take back a
piece of land it “owned” 135 years ago after it has been developed by someone
else for half a century, “ he says.
In a
series of articles written by Joseph G.Lariosa, a Fil-Am correspondent of Journal
GlobaLinks (JGL), a Chicago, Illinois-based news agency and a veteran
journalist, he asks:
“Did the
Malaysian government ever allow the heirs of the Sultanate of Sulu to talk to
their tenants in Sabah to find out their sentiments if they were
really against the Sultanate by way of a referendum for the purpose? Did the
Malaysian government allow the Sultanate air time in mass media in Sabah to
explain to their tenants that because they are residing on a piece of land
owned by a Filipino Sultanate of Sulu, they are supposed to pay rental directly
to their landlord – the heirs to the Sultanate of Sulu – not to a third party
or middleman such as the Malaysian government?”
Lariosa
then drops a bomb: “If I were the heirs to the Sultanate of Sulu, while they
are waiting for the ruling of the ICJ, I am not going to encash the 6,300
Malaysian ringgits to protest and humiliate the Malaysian government just as
Fidel Castro refused and refuses to encash the US$2,000 annual rental payment
of the U.S. to use the Guantanamo U.S. Base in order to humiliate the U.S. into
giving up the perpetual rental under the Platt Amendment.”
“Come to
think of it,”Lariosa declares. “When the Philippines leased the Clark
Air Base and Subic Base to the U.S., which account for 245 square miles
land area, the U.S. was paying $200-M annual rental to the Philippine
government. While Sabah, which has 28,430 square miles, or 116 times bigger
than the U.S. Bases, the Malaysian government is only renting Sabah for a
song!”
Last year, the Philippine Embassy in Kuala Lumpur
reported that over 569,451 or 18.2 percent of the total population of Sabah are
Filipinos, both documented and undocumented.
Death of Sultan Jamalul
Kiram III
Sultan Jamalul KiramIII died months after the Lahad Datu siege. A younger
brother, Esmail Kiram II, in a succession often beset by clan in-fighting and
claims by fake descendants of the once-powerful Muslim royalty, succeeded him.
When Esmail died on September 19, 2015, another brother, Phugdalon Kiram, was
named as the new sultan.
Based on the Kiram family tree, Jamalul was the closest living
kin to the sultan, the nephew of 33rd Sultan Esmail Kiram I, and at the same
time, the son of crown prince Punjungan Kiram. Ex-Senator Santanina Rasul also noted
that former United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon had recognized him as
the real heir.
He was born on July 16 1938 in Maimbung, a small town in the
province of Sulu and was the eldest son of Sultan Punjungan Kiram and Sharif
Usna Dalus Strattan and was directly descended from the first Sultan of Sulu,
Sharif ul-Hashim of Sulu, of the Banu Hashem tribe.
From Sulu High School he moved to Notre Dame in the capital of
Jolo, and then enrolled at Manuel L Quezon University in Manila, where he
studied Law, which he did not finish. Having joined the Ruma Betchara (Council
of the Sultan) during the reign (1962-74) of his uncle, Sultan Esmail Kiram, he
ruled as “interim sultan”, while his father, who ruled between 1974 and 1981,
was absent in Sabah. In 1984, he was proclaimed the 33rd (or possibly the 39th)
Sultan of Sulu and was crowned in Jolo in 1986.
In a historical discourse and most exhaustive journal written
about the Sabah issue, “Philippines Claim to Sabah: Legal and Historical Bases”
by Amando Respicio-Boncales, Graduate Student of Northern Illinois University,
with Dr. Kenton James Klymer as Academic Adviser states that the Philippine-Malaysian
dispute over the State of Sabah remains “a contentious diplomatic issue”.
Boncales’ objective of the study was to shed light on the
historical background of the Philippines’ claim over Sabah by examining how
various authors in the field presented the issue. Here are some excerpts:
The sultanate of Sulu was founded in 1380, nearly one and a half
century before the arrival of the Spaniards in the Philippines. The sultanate
possessed an efficient political organization, extending its influence in
Zamboanga, Basilan, Palawan, aside from the Sulu archipelago and was granted
the northeastern part of the territory as a prize for helping the Sultan of
Brunei against his enemies in 1658.
When the British came and ruled what was to be Malaysia, the
Philippine government says the contract of 1878 was a lease, and not a transfer
of ownership or sovereignty. William Treacher, governor of Borneo from 1881 to
1887, who was present at the signing of the contract and a witness,
characterized the contract as a lease and referred to the money payment as
annual rentals.
The late Diosdado Macapagal, who served in the Department of
Foreign Affairs in 1946 and later became President of the Philippines, filed a
claim to the United Nations on June 22, 1962. It claimed sovereignty,
jurisdiction and proprietary ownership of North Borneo claiming it has the
legal and historical rights to North Borneo.
Macaskie Dictum of 1939
Charles Macaskie, one of North Borneo's most successful colonial
officials, on the other hand, had a different view. The Chief Justice in 1934
and Deputy Governor in 1936, sat as judge in a 1939 case where nine heirs of
Sultan Jamalul Kiram claimed money owed to them under the 1878 grant.
Through their attorney, the heirs showed only an English
translation of the Grant of 1878 that incorrectly presented the claim as a
cession instead of a lease. (A later translation made it clear that this
was an incorrect translation). Years after the Macaskie dictum was made, the
Philippine government made moves to translate the Grant of 1878. The result
showed it was a Lease Agreement.
Francis Harrison, former United States Governor General of the
Philippines, eventually repudiated the Macaskie judgment stating, “Upon
examination of our own translation of the original document (in photostat) it
will be seen that Maxwell and Gibson, the English authors on whose text the
decision of Justice Mackaskie was based, have changed the language so as to
make the document a grant cession instead of lease, as it really was, and as
the word “padjak” in the original, really means.”
“In view of this vital divergence from the original text, I do
not find myself able to give full faith and credit to the opinion of Justice
Mackaskie in the famous case in 1939 in Sandakan,” he said.
Moreover, in a letter addressed to then Vice President and
Secretary of Foreign Affairs Elpidio Quirino, dated February 27, 1947, Harrison
explained:
“In reviewing the subject of the claims of the Sultanate of Sulu
to their ancient patrimony in North Borneo, one must come to the conclusion
that the action of the British Government in announcing on the sixteenth of
July (annexation of North Borneo to the British Crown), just twelve days after
the inauguration of the Republic of the Philippines, a step taken by the
British Government unilaterally, and without any special notice to the
Sultanate of Sulu, nor consideration of their legal rights, was an act of
political aggression which should promptly be repudiated by the Government of
the Republic of the Philippines.”
Harrison concluded: “The
Malaysian claim to Sabah, based on the British claim, is not sustainable. The
territory was only leased to the British North Borneo Company and not ceded as
the Great Britain, and later Malaysia, had claimed.” The claimants also argued
that the sultanate’s territory had been leased only to Britain, with no
agreement on incorporation into Malaysia.
Current status
Every year, the Malaysian Embassy in the Philippines issues a
check in the amount of 5,300 Malaysian Ringgit (about P77,000) to the legal
counsel of Jamalul Kiram’s descendants.
Before he became spokesperson of President Duterte, Harry Roque,
then a law professor at the University of the Philippines, said: “In my opinion,
this is more consistent with a lease rather than a sale, because you can’t have
a purchase price which is not fixed, and which is payable until kingdom come,” he
said.
Though the Lahad Datu incursion failed and former President Benigno Aquino weighed in against her father saying the
insurgency had caused “death and suffering among his own people, Princess Jacel says “it brought
attention to the largely dormant issue of the claim by the Philippines to parts
of Borneo, based on the Sultanate of Sulu’s past control over the area.
Decades
and centuries may go, but Jacel says her family remembers its history as clear
as it were yesterday. No change of presidency, not even the odds posed by the
Malaysian security forces are going to make them forget that Sabah used to
belong to the Sulu Sultanate.
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