Thread: Malaysia Said to Open Fire on Armed Muslim Filipinos

Malaysia Said to Open Fire on Armed Filipinos

By FLOYD WHALEY and GERRY MULLANY

Published: February 28, 2013

MANILA — Shots have been fired in a tense standoff between a group of armed Muslim Filipinos and Malaysian police officer who have them surrounded in a remote northeast area of Malaysia, a Philippine presidential spokesman said Friday.

The group, which is occupying an isolated village in attempt to revive a historical claim to the area, tried early Friday morning to breach the perimeter established by Malaysian police, said Ricky Carandang, a Philippine presidential spokesman.

The group claims the territory in Malaysia’s Sabah State as its own, and has rejected a plea from President Benigno S. Aquino III of the Philippines to leave. The group’s seizure of the coastal village has complicated relations between the Philippines and Malaysia.

After the group tried to breach the perimeter, the Malaysian police fired warning shots to force them to return to the cordoned off area and no one was injured, Mr. Carandang said.

“They apparently tried to leave the area and were stopped,” Mr. Carandang said by telephone. “We have conflicting reports but this is what we have verified so far.”

The group’s leader, who is based in Manila, claimed on Friday that the Malaysian police opened fire on them. The leader, Prince Rajah Mudah Agbimuddin Kiram, told the Philippine radio station DZBB that the group was fighting back and that there had been Filipino casualties.

The episode began Feb. 12, when the group, which is seeking to revive a historical claim to part of Borneo, arrived by boat from the Philippines and seized the land. The Philippines on Monday sent a navy vessel to the area with medical and diplomatic personnel to pick up the group or escort them back to the Philippines, hoping to resolve the situation.

Mr. Aquino said Tuesday that his government had sent emissaries to meet with Mr. Kiram to resolve the issue.

“These are your people, and it behooves you to recall them,” Mr. Aquino said to the leader in his Tuesday statement. “It must be clear to you that this small group of people will not succeed in addressing your grievances, and that there is no way that force can achieve your aims.”

The Philippines has been coordinating with the Malaysian government to resolve the issue peacefully, but Malaysian police officials in the area where the standoff is taking place had earlier suggested that they were prepared to use force if necessary.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/02/wo...inos.html?_r=0


Shooting erupts in 3-week-old standoff in Malaysian village as Filipino clan stays ...

Fox News - ‎16 minutes ago‎

MANILA, Philippines – Shooting erupted in a Malaysian village that has been occupied by nearly 200 members of a Filipino clan for three weeks, but the Malaysian home minister denied Friday that his forces were responsible. Members of a Muslim royal clan ...

Shooting erupts in 3-week-old standoff in Malaysian village as Filipino clan stays put | Fox News

1 March 2013 Last updated at 07:57 ET

Sabah stand-off 'turns deadly' as clashes break out

At least 14 people have died in clashes to end the siege of a village in Malaysia's Sabah province by a Philippines clan, police say.

Sabah Police Chief Hamza Taib said two police officers and 12 Filipino rebels had been killed at Lahad Datu.

Lahad Datu was occupied in early February by members of a Muslim royal clan from the Philippines calling itself the Royal Army of Sulu.

They are demanding recognition as the rightful owners of Sabah province.

The group - some of them armed - had been urged to end their siege by both the Malaysian and Philippine governments.

Hamza Taib said the killings happened during a 30-minute shoot-out on Friday morning, when members of the clan opened fire as the security forces were tightening a security cordon around the village.

He told the Associated Press that the stand-off was continuing. "We don't want to engage them but they fired at us. We have no option but to return fire," he said.

But confusion remains over what exactly has happened in the remote part of Sabah.

The leader of the gang, Agbimuddin Kiram, told a Philippines radio station that police had surrounded them and opened fire.

"They are here, they entered our area so we have to defend ourselves. There's shooting already," he told Manila-based DZBB radio.

"We're surrounded. We will defend ourselves," he said. The group has put its death toll at 10.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak confirmed that two police officers had died and three were wounded, and said between 10 and 12 clan members had been killed.

He said he had given the security forces "full power" to do what was necessary to "defeat" the group, according to Malaysia state news agency Bernama.

"I am very sad over the incident because what we had wanted to prevent, which is bloodshed, had actually happened," the prime minister said.

Mr Kiram, the younger brother of the self-proclaimed Sultan of Sulu Jamalul Kiram III, led the gang of at least 100 from their home on the Philippine islands of Sulu in early February to the shores of Sabah.

The Sulu Sultanate once spread over several southern Philippine islands as well as parts of Borneo, and claimed Sabah as its own before it was designated a British protectorate in the 1800s.

Sabah became part of Malaysia in 1963, and the country still pays a token rent to the Sulu Sultanate each year.

The Royal Army of Sulu wants Malaysia to recognise it as the rightful owner of Sabah, and to renegotiate the terms of the old lease - something Malaysia has made clear it has no intention of doing.

BBC News - Sabah stand-off 'turns deadly' as clashes break out

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http://www.alipac.us/f12/289-filipin...boanga-273825/

Malaysia attacks Filipinos to end Borneo siege
By SEAN YOONG, Associated Press | March 3, 2013 | Updated: March 4, 2013 8:11pm

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In this photo taken on March 2, 2013, a group of Malaysian police commandos stand guard near the area where the stand-off with Filipino gunmen took place in Tanduo village, Lahad Datu, Sabab, Malaysia. Malaysia is sending hundreds of soldiers to a Borneo state to help neutralize armed Filipino intruders who've killed 8 policemen in the country's bloodiest security emergency in years. Nineteen Filipino gunmen have been slain since Friday in skirmishes that shocked Malaysians unaccustomed to such violence in their country, which borders restive southern provinces in the Philippines and Thailand. MALAYSIA OUT, , NO ARCHIVE Photo: Bernama News Agency

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysian security forces using fighter jets attacked nearly 200 Filipino intruders on Tuesday to end the armed group's three-week violent occupation of a Borneo village that became the country's biggest security crisis in years.
Prime Minister Najib Razak confirmed the assault was launched Tuesday morning after clashes in Malaysia's eastern Sabah state this past week killed eight policemen. He had earlier declared that security forces were authorized to take any action deemed necessary.
The main group of intruders comprises members of a Philippine Muslim clan, some bearing rifles and grenade launchers, who slipped past naval patrols last month, landed at a remote Malaysian coastal village in Sabah's Lahad Datu district and insisted the territory was theirs.
Nineteen Filipino gunmen have also been slain in Lahad Datu and another Sabah coastal district involving a smaller group of Filipinos since Friday. The skirmishes shocked Malaysians unaccustomed to such violence in their country, which borders insurgency-plagued southern provinces in the Philippines and Thailand.
"The government has to take the appropriate action to protect national pride and sovereignty as our people have demanded," Najib said in a statement issued through the national news agency, Bernama.
Authorities made every effort to resolve the siege peacefully since the presence of the group in Lahad Datu district became known on Feb. 12, including holding talks to encourage the intruders to leave without facing any serious legal repercussions, Najib said.
"The longer this intrusion persisted, it became clear to the authorities that the intruders had no intention to leave Sabah," Najib said. "As a peace-loving Islamic country that upholds efforts to settle conflicts through negotiations, our struggle to avoid bloodshed in Lahad Datu did not work."
Sabah police chief Hamza Taib confirmed the attack involved ground and air operations conducted by both the police and military, which included bombing the area. He declined to elaborate, saying the operation remained ongoing two hours after it was launched shortly after dawn.
Abraham Idjirani, spokesman for the Sulu sultanate, told reporters in Manila that the Filipino group in Sabah would not surrender and that their leader was safe. The group is led by a brother of Sultan Jamalul Kiram III of the southern Philippine province of Sulu.
Lahad Datu district is a short boat ride from the Philippine province, and the clan members had rebuffed calls to leave, claiming Sabah belonged to their royal sultanate and that Malaysia has been paying a paltry amount to lease the vast territory with many palm plantations.
The Philippine government had asked Malaysia to exercise maximum tolerance to avoid further bloodshed.
In Manila, presidential spokesman Ricky Carandang said Tuesday that Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario was in Kuala Lumpur meeting with his Malaysian counterpart.
"We've done everything we could to prevent this, but in the end Kiram's people chose this path," Carandang said.
An undetermined number of other armed Filipinos are suspected to have encroached on other districts within 300 kilometers (200 miles) of Lahad Datu.
Some activists say the crisis illustrates an urgent need to review border security and immigration policies for Sabah, where hundreds of thousands of Filipinos have headed in recent decades — many of them illegally — to seek work and stability.
Groups of Filipino militants have occasionally crossed into Sabah to carry out kidnappings, including one that involved island resort vacationers in 2000. Malaysia has repeatedly intensified its patrols, but the long sea border with the Philippines remains difficult to guard.
Some in Muslim-majority Malaysia advocated patience in handling the Lahad Datu intruders. But the deaths of the Malaysian police officers, including six who were ambushed while inspecting a waterfront village in a separate Sabah district on Saturday, have triggered widespread alarm over the possibility of more such intrusions.
For the second time in two days, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III had gone on national TV to urge the Filipino group in Lahad Datu to lay down their arms, warning that the situation could worsen and endanger about 800,000 Filipinos settlers there.
The crisis could have wide-ranging political ramifications in both countries. Some fear it might undermine peace talks brokered by Malaysia between Manila and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the main Muslim rebel group in the southern Philippines.
It also could affect public confidence in Malaysia's long-ruling National Front coalition, which is gearing up for general elections that must be held by the end of June. The coalition requires strong support from voters in Sabah to fend off an opposition alliance that hopes to end more than five decades of federal rule by the National Front.
The U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur has advised Americans to avoid traveling to much of Sabah's east coast, which includes towns that are embarkation points for nearby diving resort islands, because of the potential for more violence.
　
　
http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Malaysia-attacks-Filipinos-to-end-Borneo-siege-4325285.php