Sulu sultan Kiram II dead at 76

MANILA, Philippines - Sultan of Sulu Esmail Kiram II died of kidney failure Saturday at a hospital in Zamboanga City, his family and followers said yesterday.

He was 76.

Kiram left an order for the sultanate and followers to pursue the claim to Sabah, according to sultanate spokesman Abraham Idjirani.

“One of his instructions was the pursuit of the Sabah claim through peaceful means for the welfare of the Filipino people,” he said.

In February 2013, the Sultanate of Sulu stirred up a crisis between Malaysia and the Philippines when Kiram’s younger brother and about 200 followers, dozens of them armed, barged into Sabah’s coastal village of Lahad Datu.

Malaysia sent troops and launched airstrikes in weeks of sporadic fighting that killed dozens of people before the standoff eased.

Kiram’s younger brother who led that invasion survived the intense clashes and managed to return home to the southern Philippines, where he died last year of a heart attack, Idjirani said.

Since the 1960s, Malaysia has governed the resource-rich frontier Sabah region of timberlands and palm oil plantations in northern Borneo as its second-largest federal state.

Emerging in the 1400s, the Sultanate of Sulu had become a legend for its wide influence at the time and its feared Tausug warriors.

Chinese and European leaders once sent vassals to pay homage to their powerful forebears.

It preceded both the Philippine republic and Malaysia by centuries, Idjirani said.

The Kirams now carry royal titles and nothing much else. The sultanate has about 75,000 followers in Sulu and outlying islands that are among the country’s poorest regions.