Category: Cross Border

History catches up with Sabah

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

sabah newspapers

FOR SEVERAL DAYS NOW, Manila’s broadsheets have been bannering the confrontation between followers of Sultan Jamalul Kiram III and Malaysian authorities in a small town in Sabah.

Reports have it that some 300 armed followers of the Sultan of Sulu had traveled from Sulu in the southern Philippines to the town of Lahad Datu in Sabah to “reclaim their homeland.” The followers of the Sultan have refused to leave, claiming they have a right to be in a place that was historically theirs to begin with.

“Why should we leave our own home? In fact they (the Malaysians) are paying rent [to us],” the Philippine Daily Inquirer quoted Kiram as saying. The Inquirer story may be read here

For decades, the dispute over Sabah has alternately simmered or blown up, depending on the mood of whoever is in charge in Kuala Lumpur or Manila. Former President Marcos tried to raise an army of infiltrators to destabilize Sabah, but that caper ended in bloodshed with the Jabidah Massacre, resulting in even more bloodshed with the ensuing Moro rebellion. Presidents after Marcos either ignored the issue or delegated it to that process of systematically gathering dust called diplomacy. More recently, President Benigno S. Aquino III said the country’s claim over Sabah was just “dormant.”

While a lot of Filipinos know that North Borneo (now known as Sabah) has always been a point of dispute between the Philippines and Malaysia, few really know the roots of the dispute. Even fewer still know that the Sultan of Sulu, Jamalul Kiram III, has been receiving a yearly amount from the government of Malaysia in exchange for Sabah, or at least the use of it, depending on how one interprets the contract signed more than a hundred and thirty years ago.

Long before there was a Manila, or even a Philippines, the Sultanate of Sulu was one of the most powerful and influential governments in the region, with diplomatic and trade ties going as far as China. In the 1700s, the Sultan of Brunei was faced with a rebellion in Borneo, and sought the assistance of the Sultan of Sulu. In response, the Sultan of Sulu sent Tausug warriors to quell the rebellion. As a token of his appreciation for the assistance rendered, the Sultan of Brunei gave what is now known as Sabah to the Sultan of Sulu.

Fast forward to 1878 – the Sultan of Sulu signs an agreement with a private firm called the British North Borneo Company under Alfred Dent and Baron von Overbeck to allow the company the use of Sabah. This is where the difficulty arises. The British version of the contract says that the Sultan agrees to “grant and cede” North Borneo for the sum of $5,000 a year. The Tausug version of the contract says that the land was only being leased to the British North Borneo Company. Key to the dispute is the translation of the Malay word Padjak in the contract, which has been translated variously as lease, pawn, or even mortgage, depending on who does the translating and when the translation was done. Language, after all, also evolves over the years. If you take a stroll down Jolo these days, you will see a lot of pawnshops with the sign “Padjak.”

Sultan Jamalul Kiram

Sultan Jamalul Kiram (center) during the American occupation

 

Since 1878, the Sultan of Sulu and his heirs have been receiving this yearly payment (with an occasional break because of wars, changes in government,  and other similar inconveniences), first, from the British North Borneo Company, and then after 1963, from the Malaysian Federation, which assumed jurisdiction over the contract from the by then defunct British North Borneo Company. These days, the annual payments given by the Malaysian Embassy in Manila to the Sultan of Sulu reportedly amount to P74-77,000, or roughly more than $1,800. Malaysia prefers to call the annual payments “cession payments,” in which case the payments would appear to be a perpetual fee for the ceding of Sabah to Malaysia. Sultan Jamalul Kiram III, for his part, has called the payments “rental,” meaning ownership of Sabah still rests with the Sultanate of Sulu, now of course a part of the Philippines.

But while ancient history may appear to be on Manila’s side, contemporary history is not.

When one visits Sabah, one easily comes across thousands of Filipino migrants, mostly Tausugs from Sulu and Tawi-Tawi. Sabah, after all, is just a skip and a hop away from Tawi-Tawi, and many Tausugs find more in common with the people of Sabah than the people in Manila. Long before modern governments started drawing lines on maps and calling them borders, Tausugs were travelling to and from North Borneo and laying their roots there. To them, Sabah was just “that next island over there.” In the port of Sandakan, Tausugs practically have the run of the town, and you can approach most anyone and try to converse with them in Filipino. While Malaysia tries hard to control the inflow of Tausugs through the immigration center in Sandakan, most Tausugs just take a fast motorboat or kumpit from the most southern parts of Tawi-Tawi. After all, you could already see the lights of Sabah from some islands in Tawi-Tawi.

sabah8

The author backpacking through Sabah

In fact, when we visited Sandakan by ferry several years ago, we saw boats towing large rafts of timber from Tawi-Tawi to Sabah. Obviously, this trading activity was not going through customs.

As well, there are many Kampongs in Sabah that are populated by Tausugs, many of whom are either war or economic refugees. Kampong is the Malay word for community, much like the Philippine barangay.

Take note that we have been using the word Tausug to describe the migrants from Jolo and Tawi-Tawi; Tausug for many of them is not just the name of the tribe, but their political and cultural identity as well. Their association with this identity is much stronger than their association with the country they came from. Interestingly and alarmingly, we came across many who indignantly refused to be called Filipinos, and preferred to just be called “Tausug.” For them, the Philippines is a distant, even unfriendly memory.

But what was most striking was this: Many of the Tausugs we encountered detested the idea of the Philippine government reclaiming Sabah. Refugees from war and poverty, many of these Tausugs see little benefit in a Sabah under the Philippine flag; in fact, for them, it is a worrying proposition, not unlike jumping from the cliched frying pan into an even bigger fire.

One Tausug we encountered outside a mall in Kota Kinabalu bristled at the idea of the Philippines staking a claim on Sabah. “Sisirain lang nila ang Sabah. Okay na nga ang Sabah ngayon, guguluhin lang nila,” he said. [They will just destroy Sabah. Sabah is doing fine right now, they will just mess it up.]

It is hard to blame them for the cynicism. After all, they took great risks and fled their own troubled country in droves for a better life, only to have that same country reach out and stake a claim on what to them is already a virtual paradise where one can finally live and work in peace. That, to them, may be the ultimate irony, the ultimate tragedy.

 

 

 

 

Cyberscouts, restrictive laws choking cyberspace in Asia – CPJ

mcmangahas Leave a comment

THE PHILIPPINES is well on her way to joining a roll of dishonor of nations in Southeast Asia that are restricting online freedom. That is, if President Aquino should insist on enforcing the much-criticized Cybercrime Prevention Act.

It is not a charming company at all of countries in the region that are now infringing on freedom of expression in cyberspace through national security-hinged laws, judicial crackdown, surveillance and censorship.

These are the findings of a fresh report, “In Asia, Three Nations Clip Once-Budding Online Freedom,” by Shawn W. Crispin, senior representative for Southeast Asia of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

In particular, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam — “countries that once had some of the region’s most promising online openings and vibrant blogospheres — stand out as the most egregious backsliders due to official crackdowns,” he said.

And yet, it was “through critical postings and commentaries, online journalists in the three countries had challenged officialdom’s traditional control over the mainstream media,” Crispin noted. “Their independent reporting opened once untouchable institutions and largely unaccountable politicians to more public scrutiny and criticism.”

Seeing online commentaries as “a threat to their authority,” the governments in these nations “are fighting back with a vengeance, employing increasingly harsh tactics including the imposition of intermediary liability and local data hosting requirements, and the use of underlying anti-state and national security laws to crack down on Internet freedoms,” he said.

In China, Crispin said journalists believe “Beijing’s repressive model” now seems to be serving other governments a reference. Thus, the deployment of “Internet agents,” known respectively in Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam as “cybertroopers,” “cyberscouts,” and “red guards,” are now “flooding online political forums with pro-government propaganda or undermine critical bloggers through ad hominem attacks.”

Nonetheless, the Philippines, Cambodia, and Singapore are charting parallel restrictive tracks. The three nations, Crispin averred, “are moving more tentatively, mostly through legal measures governing the Internet, in the same restrictive direction.”

For the here and now, “they have only partially succeeded,”because “tech-savvy reporters have made effective use of proxy servers and other technological roundabouts to circumvent state-administered blocks and maintain their online anonymity and security.

Indeed, across Southeast Asia, Crispin wrote, “governments have curtailed Internet freedoms through increasingly restrictive practices, including prohibitive laws, heightened surveillance and censorship, and threats of imprisonment on various national security-related offenses.”

“In Thailand, a court recently ruled that website editor Chiranuch Premchaiporn criminally liable for a criticism of the monarchy that an anonymous visitor had posted on her news website Prachatai. The landmark verdict, Crispin wrote, “effectively shifted the onus of Internet censorship in Thailand from government authorities to Internet intermediaries.”

Because she failed to remove the comment quickly enough — it lingered for over 20 days on Prachatai — the court ruled that Chiranuch had “mutually consented” to the critical comment.

She was acquitted of nine other charges but in this intance, Chiranuch was dealt an eight-month suspended prison term under the 2007 Computer Crime Act. This law passed in May 2012 in the wake of a military coup applies Thailand’s strict lese majeste law to online content, among other restrictions.

“While the ruling sent a stark warning to all online journalists in Thailand,” Crispin said, “it also implied that Web managers of user-generated platforms like political chat rooms, social media applications, and e-commerce hubs could also be held accountable for content posted to their sites deemed offensive to the royal family, a criminal offense punishable by 15 years in prison under Thai law.”

“The verdict,” Chiranuch was quoted as saying, “confirmed that the [Computer Crime Act] could be implemented to restrict Internet freedom by requiring intermediaries to police Internet content.” The law, she lamented, “has had direct effects on freedom of expression and free flow of information because Internet intermediaries now must practice self-censorship.”

Meanwhile in Vietnam, “pseudonymous bloggers have gravitated from domestic to foreign-hosted platforms to conceal their identities.”

Thirteen of the 14 journalists imprisoned in late 2012 were jailed “primarily for their online writings.” They include prominent bloggers Nguyen Van Hai, Ta Phong Tan, and Phan Thanh Hai, who were sentenced respectively to 12, 10, and four years in prison for online postings, Crispin reported. The judge assigned to the case ruled that the bloggers had “abused the popularity of the Internet” and “destroyed people’s trust in the state.”

Bloggers Dinh Dang Dinh and Le Thanh Tung had also been slapped jail terms to six and five years for supposedly mounting “propaganda against the state” online.

In Malaysia, “where the government tries to maintain the illusion of an uncensored Internet,” Crispin said, “curbs against online freedom have been less overt but similarly disruptive for journalists.”

“In 1996, in an effort to lure foreign investment to the Multimedia Super Corridor, a state-led information technology development project, then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and other senior officials vowed not to censor the Internet,” he recalled. “The no-censorship promise was also included in the corridor’s 10-point ‘bill of guarantees’ and the 1998 Communication and Multimedia Act.”

“Despite the Internet freedoms guaranteed under the Communication and Multimedia Act, bloggers have been detained and charged under provisions of the Official Secrets Act, the Sedition Act, and the Security Offenses Act for postings on such sensitive topics as race, religion, and official corruption. The vague national security-related laws have recently been extended to stifle online criticism of Malaysia’s royal sultans.”

In July 2012, Crispin said, blogger Syed Abdullah Syed Hussein al-Attas was briefly detained by the police under the Official Secrets Act over a series of investigative articles he posted about the sultan of the state of Johor.

In 2010, Khairul Nizam Abd Ghani, who blogs under the name Aduka Taruna, was detained under the Sedition Act for postings considered insulting to Johor state’s royal family, Crispin wrote. The blogger was acquitted in June 2012 “after state prosecutors failed to present evidence to justify the charges.”

Additionally, “Malaysiakini, the country’s leading online news portal, has been persistently singled out for harassment, both from official and anonymous sources,” Crispin said. “Days before a pivotal state election in 2011, Malaysiakini and two other news websites were hit by debilitating denial-of-service attacks of unknown origin that forced them to publish through alternative domain names and platforms.”

The CPJ’s research showed that the news portal “has also been hit by unexplained cyber attacks at least 35 times since the site was founded in 1999.”

In April 2012, Malaysia’s parliament passed an amendment to the 1950 Evidence Act “that made intermediaries liable for any seditious postings made by anonymous visitors to their online platforms or over their Wi-Fi networks.”

Crispin wrote: “The amendment threatened to ‘open the door to selective, politically motivated prosecutions,’ the U.S. government-funded Freedom House said in a September report on global Internet conditions.”

“The amendment has sent a chill down the spine of Internet users,” Crispin quoted Anil Netto, a prominent Malaysian political blogger, as saying. “It makes me more careful about moderating comments that are posted on my blog… just to be on the safe side against seditious or potentially libelous remarks.”

Crispin is a reporter and editor for Asia Times Online, and author of the 2012 CPJ report, “As Vietnam’s economy opens, press freedom shrinks.”

Democracy as a pot of food boiling, burning, half-cooked

mcmangahas Leave a comment

A NATION’S JOURNEY from repression to democratic restoration, and on to democratic consolidation, is never a single, straight path nor a simple daang matuwid.

There are, in fact, multiple roads to democratic transition, multiple paths strewn with trials reversals or even a series of missteps.

In truth, democratic transition could also be likened to “a pot of food that has been boiling in the stove, you smell it, it could be good or bad, it is food that someone has already cooked, it could be burning at the bottom or even not yet quite cooked.”

So, what next? “First thing you do is lower the heat, check for the missing ingredients, balance the flavor, see the role of the media, civil society, and all other stakeholders” to help cook it well.

Journalists from various countries who spoke at the keynote session of the Journalism Asia conference that opened today, Feb. 15, 2013, in Chiang Mai, Thailand, agree to the last that democratic transition is never a neat, smooth process.

There are, in truth, “different pathways to democratize,” said one speaker. The process unfolds sometimes as “a sequence of events,” or “sometimes a one-way street,” or sometimes as a combination of “the right boxes.”

One key element must be present though, he said: Greater or more media freedom fosters greater or more democratic rule. A positive development, too, is the emergence of social media
that “tends to have a democratizing effect in restricted democracies.”

Another speaker noted that democratic transition in Southeast Asia has become difficult “because no moral power,” including for instance, “no adherence to universal principles of human rights” nor understanding of the framework of human rights and democracy.

After transition, “discrimination continues” and “new forms of oppression” emerge. And while the situation “is no longer black and white… big swamps of gray, a morass of gray” remains in society.

Despite democratic revival in Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Burma, the speaker noted “bigger splits have been created along religious lines, ethnic lines, expressed not just by governments but also by public” in some nations.

Yet a third speaker saw a problem with the fact that “no countervailing institution exists to check power, only the power of public opinion mediated by the press” in the post-transition nations of Southeast Asia.

Nonetheless, because politicians exercise power and get elected “mainly with the support and blessings of the media,” the post-transition milieu “amplifies the power of media way beyond its real power in a democratic context.”

As is happening in the former Soviet Union, in most of Southeast Asia today a picture of “old mafias” holds sway, the speaker said. “Mafias” from the military, religious groups “brandishing the bible” or lawyers “brandishing the Constitution,” and even the media, endure.

The hapless result is that “democracy might bring about the restoration of the old elite” in tandem with “the new centers of power.”

But “the most dangerous part” about “the media as a mafia,” according to the speaker, is that it has “its own romantic appeal, its own independent source of legitimacy, a power (drawn from) the glow or the afterglow of the democratic restoration.”

With its “fresh mandate to change things” after the transition to democracy, the media must be “prepared to assume that power” or the results could be “very scary.”

Yet a fourth speaker observed that the most delicate part of democratic transition is the process of consolidation.

“It’s a make-or-break process with no warranties, no guarantees of good results,” the speaker said. “New problems, new conflicts, new players emerge.” The process is assuredly often “messy and bloody.”

The “Journalism in Asia 2013″ forum is being organized by the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility and the Southeast Asian Press Alliance. Journalists, academics, and civil-society representatives from the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Myanmar are participants.

Media & democracy in SEA: Beyond elections and form

mcmangahas Leave a comment

WHAT IS DEMOCRACY if it is largely form (i.e., elections) and not substance (i.e., development) to the citizens of Southeast Asia?

Indeed, what is the role of the media in democratic transition in Myanmar, Cambodia, and all of Southeast Asia?

Is there a connect between the press and citizenship in the reformed, reforming, and restricted “democracies” of the region?

Journalists in Southeast Asia gathered today in Chiang Mai, Thailand, for a two-day conference “Journalism in Asia 2013″ organized by the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) and the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA).

The forum gathered journalists, academics, and civil society leaders from Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Myanmar.

CMFR Executive Director Melinda Quintos-de Jesus, who is also a member of the SEAPA Board of Trustees, noted that democratic transition has unfolded seemingly in six-year cycles in the region.

The process has been marked by the EDSA people power revolt in the Philippines in 1986, the democratization in Thailand in 1992, and reformasi in Indonesia in 1998.

The government of Cambodia partly relaxed media laws years later, while the military junta in Myanmar allowed opposition participation and the return of exiled journalists starting 2011.

But De Jesus said most discussions of democratic transition in the region have not stressed enough the role of the media in the process.

The forum thus seeks to identify and assess “the principal aspects of the experience, not as an event but as a process that does not quite submit to easy analysis, given the complexities of democratization,” she said.

Because transition unfolds in different, nuanced phases everywhere in the region, De Jesus said, “we are not presuming to teach anyone anything because every transition is different.” Even in the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia, she noted, democracy still remains “vulnerable to threats,” an incomplete process.

Some milestones have been achieved during the transition in democracies of the region “but not everyone has thought of the process or the role of the media in transition.” The forum aims, too, to understand the events in Myanmar and foster stronger appreciation of the difficulties of transition. Just as important, because “the media is by nature not introspective,” the forum also aims to review the role of the media in democratic transition.

However, “unless the public is responsible, and see their role in democratic development, we cannot have real democracy,” she said.

“Democracy can serve as more than just elections… which do not always result in freedom and equality for all citizens” or promote “the broad public interests of the common man and woman on the street.”

Amid the transition, too, nations in Southeast Asia have witnessed “continuing repression and violation of human rights,” and the masses “cut of” from access to capital and resources.

What is lamentable, she said, is that even with free speech and free press, the public discourse in the region has sometimes turned “banal,” marked by “confusion, lack of national dialogue and failure of national consensus.”

All these “failures” have rendered democracy as “not real to the citizens,” De Jesus averred. Democracy has been reduced to “only the external form, not the substance, not the principles or the practice.”

Given its power to help foster change and transition, the forum hopes also to locate the media’s role in democratic change, and “in creating citizenship.”

De Jesus said: “The only way to develop the press is for the press to see its role as intrinsically connected to citizenship, not just in principle but also in practice.”

The Southeast Asian Press Alliance is a network of independent media organizations in the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
SEAPA also works with journalists’ organizations in Cambodia, Vietnam, Timor-Leste, Laos, and Myanmar.

The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, the CMFR, the Alliance of Independent Journalists of Indonesia, the Thai Journalists Association, and the Center for Independent Journalism in Malaysia are SEAPA members.

PH fails to combat human trafficking – UN

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

By Edz dela Cruz

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Despite the formation of specialized anti-trafficking units, special teams of prosecutors and investigators, and the passage of an anti-trafficking law a decade ago, human trafficking continues to be “carried out with impunity” in the country, says Joy Ngozi Ezeilo,United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially in women and children

In fact, Ezeilo reports that despite all the resources and attention the government claims to have given to the problem, there have only been two convictions related to human trafficking in the country.

Ezeilo had visited the Philippines in November this year as part of her mission to investigate the problem of human trafficking and assess the efforts by governments to curb the problem.

After her visit here, Ezeilo observed that the Philippines has undoubtedly become a source country for human trafficking mainly due to poverty and a big demand for cheap and exploitative labor.The problem has grown to “alarming” proportions over the years, she observes.

Despite this, however, the Philippine government’s efforts to fight trafficking have been largely inadequate and the rate of prosecution of human traffickers low, Ezeilo says.

As UN Special Rapporteur, Ezeilo is tasked to respond effectively to reliable information on possible human rights violations, especially all forms and manifestations of trafficking. During her stay, Ezeilo gathered first-hand information on current legislative and institutional programs that tackle human trafficking in Manila, Cebu, and Zamboanga.

According to Ezeilo, despite the enactment of Republic Act No. 9208 or the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act in 2003, government authorities still have low levels of awareness, knowledge, and skills in identifying cases of trafficking. This has resulted to uneven and layered implementation of the law at the regional and local levels. Ezeilo also noted the lack of standardized collection of statistical information that tracks the prevailing rate, forms, trends, and manifestation of human trafficking.

She however, acknowledged that the Anti-Trafficking Law has provided a forum for stakeholders to coordinate with government in monitoring human trafficking and created regional and provincial councils against trafficking.

The way Ezeilo sees it through, such efforts to prevent and combat trafficking will not be effective and sustainable so long as “the underlying social, economic, and political factors that create an environment conducive to trafficking” are addressed. Such factors include poverty, youth unemployment, gender inequality, discrimination, and gender-based violence.

At the end of her report, Ezeilo enumerates several interim recommendations that could help the government combat human trafficking.Among these are: providing training on human trafficking to state authorities and law enforcement officials; establishment of a specialized court to fast track trial of trafficking cases; in-depth research on human trafficking to develop tools and build systematic data collection; the launch of widespread campaigns to raise public awareness; and appointment of a rapporteur to coordinate all anti-trafficking initiatives.

Ezeilo, a Nigerian national, teaches at the University of Nigeria and specializes in Human Rights law. She assumed her functions as Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons in August 2008.

A full report of Ngozi’s findings in this mission will be submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council in June 2013.