Ethnic cleansing in Sabah

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

3/6/2013

Daily Tribune

Initial reports in one local mainstream newspaper early this week claimed that 300 Filipinos in Sabah had "returned" to the Philippines as refugees fleeing the fighting there. That same figure or a figure close to it was earlier reported by international media as Filipinos being deported from Sabah. Lately, this has been clarified as 289 Filipinos being deported from Sabah and "worrying about their relatives" there.

Deportation of Filipinos from Sabah by the Malaysian government, however, is nothing new. It has been going on for years now. At the same time, the transfer of population from the Malay Peninsula to Sabah has been ongoing for years as well. The intention is, of course, the marginalization of the original inhabitants of Sabah — the Filipino Tausugs. This is ethnic cleansing.

Ethnic cleansing is a term evolved from the experience of the United Nations in dealing with conflict situations in different countries or nations involving "the process or policy of eliminating unwanted ethnic or religious groups by deportation, forcible displacement, mass murder or by threats of such acts, with the intent of creating a territory inhabited by people of a homogeneous or pure ethnicity, religion, culture and history."

The implicit threat of the Malaysian government of "drastic action," aside from the military crackdown and "elimination" (or massacre) of defiant members of the Filipino Tausug nation in Sabah engaged in the symbolic return of the "Sultan's army," which has turned into a bloody confrontation, is the launching of undisguised ethnic cleansing, which the recent 289 deportees may be the beginning of.

The Aquino government is just continuing the policy of appeasement and capitulation to the British-Malaysian illegal occupation of Sabah. Its figurative and literal "mother," the Cory Aquino government, foisted onto the nation by the fraudulent Edsa I counter-revolution, had, as its counter-revolutionary high point, the attempted ceding of Philippine territory long held in Philippine history as part of the nation's patrimony.

Cory Aquino began the process of "losing" the territory with the removal of the provision previously included in the Philippine Constitution on the National Territory: "The national territory comprises the Philippine archipelago, with all the islands and waters … and all the other territories belonging to the Philippines by historic or legal title, including the territorial sea, the air space…" Cory's — or the Western powers' — Constitutional Commission omitted "historic or legal title."

Sandakan, for example, was the site for Jose Rizal's dream "Utopia" to move landless peasants from his hometown Calamba to form the New Calamba. From Ckomyonisxt's Blog: "Dr. Rizal went to Sabah to negotiate with the British authorities and this mission was a success. They were intended to settle at Bengkoka river and Maradu as well. The British Gov't was willing to give this Filipino colony…100,000 acres of land free of all charges for 999 years. The fact (is) that the long run Sabah Patrimony was one to be the greatest dream(s) of Rizal. Sabah is…our heritage land…"
But for the latest Aquino in Malacañang, like the first one there, this "heritage land" is but a mere commodity to give away in exchange for the family name to carry on as part of the ruling class — a ruling class of families subservient to Western powers.

To divert from the real issue of this government's "a-piece-ment" policy, Aquino is turning to shake the voodoo doll, Mr. Bogeyman, the scarecrow, and the "multo" of "conspirators, plotters, and "critics" behind the growing conflict between Malaysian authorities and the Tausug patriots in Sabah. Aquino's two major media cronies in the Inquirer and Philippine Star are attempting to ridicule the sacrifice of Tausug blood as being like the Marcos-era cult "Lapiang Malaya," besides being "subversive" for "inciting to war;" this, as Malacañang simultaneously uses the age-old ploy of conjuring "other sultans and claimants" to muddle the issue.

None will succeed in erasing the words written in the blood of the patriot Tausug — spoken by Princess Jaycel Kiram — rejecting surrender: "The decision remains the same because honor is above life. This is a clear message of the sultanate. What's the use of life if we lose our honor?"
Princess Jaycel will not find an ear in Malacañang today where — by the tradition handed down from grandfather and Japanese puppet-leader to the son who committed treason in the "Jabidah" exposé in the service of the British, to the mother who "Snopaked" Sabah from the Philippine map for the same master, to the grandson who does not and cannot know anymore the meaning of "honor," with "surrender" written into his DNA — treason is de rigueur.

As Malacañang looks for wriggle room to extricate itself and its tradition of treason from the Sabah bind, the noose gets tighter while the Malaysian occupation government's ethnic cleansing and murder will find even greater opposition from the Tausugs —for all Filipinos are now Tausug.

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