For whatever reason, Gary Younge and Glenn Greenwald did not feel the need to express empathy for the dead of the latest emergency in Malaysian Borneo. In February of this year, several hundred armed men from the soi-disant Sultanate of Sulu arrived in the Lahad Dutu district causing an immediate armed confrontation with Malaysian forces.
Situated in the extreme east of Sabah province on Borneo island, the area forms part of the historical state of the Sultanate of Sulu (based around the Sulu and Tawi-Tawi islands now forming part of the Philippines) before it was dissolved during American and British colonial disputes in the 1910s. Without any internationally recognized position of the Sultan of Sulu, several claimants make an equally non-existent claim to it: including Ismael Kiram II, whom the Filipino provincial authorities recognize as the titular head; as well as his brother Jamalul Kiram III, whom he has accepted as coregent since late 2012.
With public expressions, at least, of objection from Ismael, it appears to have been men from Jamalul’s faction who led this irredentist raid. As an individual event, it was a bagatelle and after a relatively minor engagement with Malaysian forces, it has been suppressed.
The backdrop to it, however, is one of lingering tensions between multiple countries in the region. Although taking a more circumspect approach than the badly trained attack dog of Jamalul’s faction, the Philippines maintains a territorial claim to much of Sabah province based on the historical territories of the Sultanate of Sulu; which she attempted to crowbar into a recent dispute taken to the ICJ by Indonesia concerning several islands in the Celebes Sea controlled by Malaysia.
The ICJ both ruled in favour of Malaysia and rejected the Philippines’ application.
Earlier this month, dozens of gun and panang totting Sulu men in boats were detained in Malaysian waters off Sabah. Although the authorities appear now to have accepted it was a genuine error, Jamalul’s faction this week has announced the dispatch of many more armed men to Sabah.