No one owns land ‘forever’

It would be a mistake to conclude that by posting pictures of the Sultan’s dead men and declaring victory by Malaysian forces is the end of the Sabah story. Worse is the juvenile statement of Prime Minister Najib Razak that Sabah belongs to them “forever.”

May I remind Mr. Razak that this was also what the earlier Sultan Kiram thought when the Sultan of Brunei (who also thought he owned it) gave it to him as a reward for helping quell a rebellion. Just to show you no one owns any land “forever.”

The world is round, Mr. Razak, and you have made it rounder even sooner by killing the Sultan’s combatants so cruelly even as they heeded the UN call for a unilateral ceasefire. The unfortunate events of last week are neither the beginning nor the end of the story.

For many of us Christians from Luzon and the Visayas, the Sultan’s brave attempt has forced us to know and understand what Mindanao and its conflicts are all about. That is in itself a considerable victory because the ignorance of a greater part of Filipinos about Sabah is a major block and for this we salute the men who lost their lives that we may be made aware. Thank you for the gift of awareness. That is also true for the rest of the world who would not have known what the Sabah issue was all about.

The best source of information on the Philippine Sabah claim comes from Sen. Jovito Salonga’s reply to Senator Lorenzo Sumulong when the two debated the issue in Congress in 1962. I quoted Salonga in my column last week but I repeat it today.

Here is how I understand it: Salonga was hopping mad when Sumulong contradicted the government’s stand on the Sabah claim, hence he painstakingly crafted a point by point reply that has come down to us for our guidance at this time.

“Thousands of years ago, what is now known as the Philippines and what is known today as Borneo used to constitute a single historical, cultural, economic unit. This is confirmed by scientific studies of land bridges. Indeed Borneo is only 18 miles away from us today. North Borneo, formerly known as Sabah, was originally ruled by the Sultan of Brunei. In 1704, in gratitude for help extended to him by the Sultan of Sulu in suppressing a revolt, the Sultan of Brunei ceded North Borneo to the Sulu Sultan. This is where the claim comes from.

But he was acknowledged by various European countries, among them Britain, Spain and the Netherlands as the sovereign ruler of North Borneo and entered into various treaty arrangements with him.

But in 1878, the Sultan leased Borneo to an Austrian, Baron de Overbeck for Malayan $5,000 (roughly equivalent to a meager $1,600), He later sold the lease contract to Alfred Dent, an English merchant, who established a provisional association and later a Company, known as the British North Borneo Company, which assumed all the rights and obligations under the 1878 contract. This company was awarded a Royal Charter in 1881 but the British Government confirmed in reply to critics of its appropriation that “sovereignty remains with the Sultan of Sulu” and that the Company was merely an administering authority.

In 1946, the British North Borneo Company transferred all its rights and obligations to the British Crown.

In 1962 the House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution urging the President of the Philippines to recover North Borneo consistent with international law and procedure. Acting on this unanimous resolution and having acquired all the rights and interests of the Sultanate of Sulu, the Republic of the Philippines, through the President, filed the claim to North Borneo.

It accused the British Crown of disregarding the contract of 1878 and their solemn commitments when it turned over Sabah to Malaysia. Nothing could be clearer if we are to follow the rule of law. But that is not what happened and through the years of Philippine government neglect in pursuing the claim and the arrogance of Western nations, it became “dormant.”

But it is not about the claim alone. We are told that the MNLF and the Sultan’s group feel left out of the Malaysian sponsored MILF-GRP peace agreement that would give MILF the upper hand in governing Moroland in Mindanao. Some say Malaysia did not want the MNLF and Sultanate included precisely because of the claim. So Sultan Kiram had to move boldly so the claim would not be swept under the rug.

The complexity of the problem comes from our inability to forge national unity. Had we a stronger state, GRP should have been able to manage a peace formula that would include the MNLF, MILF, the Sultanates, the Lumads and the Christians. There would have been no need of Malaysia, the US or Britain to sponsor a peace agreement on what was essentially an internal conflict. But with the Sultan activating the Sabah claim, the Malaysian sponsored peace agreement has hit the shoals.

Datu Jamal Ashley Yahya Abbas, a Muslim scholar wrote in a paper entitled “GRP-MILF as quests for identity” says that it is a mistake to look at the problem in Mindanao as if it were about the Muslims alone. His perspective for a solution includes non-Muslims, more so of Christians, colonized then and now. We had a common cause against colonialism.

A group of Moro politicians once sought the advice of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Bangsa Moro. He replied why Bangsa Moro only?

What about Bangsa Malay? That would be the wide swath of Malayland — Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia because we all come from the same Malay stock.

This was also the basis for Macapagal’s Maphilindo but his vision was not pursued. Salonga even then thought that “if the administration of President Macapagal seriously believed that the Philippine claim of sovereignty to a portion of North Borneo should be prosecuted to the bitter end, it must be prepared to establish the identity of that portion whether the case is brought before the International Court of Justice or before the United Nations.”

He proposed that the Philippine government inform the United Nations when the Federation of Malaysia plan is submitted for consideration in the United Nations that we are voluntarily relinquishing whatever claim of sovereignty we may have to any portion of North Borneo to facilitate this wider union of Malays.

Moreover, the Sabah claim, being a difficult case, requires great statesmanship and adroit diplomacy. The saddest part of Filipinos’ grievance is that we do not have such leadership.

Gone are the days of Macapagal, Salonga and Sumulong who could differ but carry on the debate on a high plane to the admiration of the world.