Government marks anniversary of massacre that lead to rebellion

DPA/Manila

The Philippines yesterday marked for the first time the anniversary of a 1968 massacre of young Muslim men recruited by the military for a covert mission to reclaim the north Borneo state of Sabah from Malaysia.

President Benigno Aquino III led the commemorations on Corregidor Island, 50 kilometres west of Manila, where more than 130 Muslim recruits to a military unit called Jabidah began training in December 1967 for a mission known as Merdeka.

According to survivors’ accounts, between 20 and 68 recruits were killed on March 18, 1968 by Philippine soldiers on the orders of former president Ferdinand Marcos in a bid to hide the failed mission.

“It has been four and a half decades since the bloody events here in Corregidor,” he said. “To this day, government has yet to officially recognise it; the incident is taught in class or inserted into books as if it were mere gossip; no measures have been taken to record it in history.”

“Today, we are opening the eyes of the Filipino people to the Jabidah massacre,” he added. “This happened. And it is our responsibility to recognise this event as part of our national narrative.”

Under the mission, the recruits were to sow instability in Sabah to allow the Philippines to reclaim the territory, which the sultan of the Philippine province of Sulu claims to own historically.

The mission turned sour when the recruits learned of their true mission and realised they had to fight Muslims in Sabah, who included some relatives. They also became disgruntled over unpaid allowances. The massacre has been widely regarded as the catalyst to the decades-old separatist rebellion in the southern Philippines, which has killed more than 100,000 people.

In February, more than 200 followers of Sulu Sultan Jamalul Kiram III set up camp in Lahad Datu town in Sabah to assert the sultanate’s historical claim over the territory. Fighting with Malaysian forces since March 1 has left 68 people dead, including 57 Filipinos.