Sulu Sultan Jamalul Kiram III reads the Mindanao Examiner Regional Newspaper, which is being circulated in Manila‘s Quiapo District, from his home in Taguig City. (Photo by Mark Navales)
MANILA (Mindanao Examiner / Oct. 20, 2013) – Sulu Sultan Jamalul Kiram III has died on Sunday due to complication caused by renal disease, his daughter said.
Princess Jacel said her father died at the Philippine Heart Center in Quezon City where they rushed the 75-year old Muslim leader after his blood pressure dropped drastically. The sultan was supposed to undergo his routine dialysis when he died.
In February, the ailing self-proclaimed sultan sent about 200 followers headed by his brother Raja Muda Agbimuddin Kiram to Sabah to exert their claim and historical rights over the island, which is also being claimed by Malaysia.
Sultan Jamalul’s group has rejected Malaysian demand for them to surrender peacefully and a fighting erupted. More than 60 of the sultan’s men had been killed and over 300 Filipinos arrested on suspicion they were supporting or aiding the group of Raja Muda Agbimuddin.
Malaysia has put Sultan Jamalul and his brother on its wanted list and branded them as terrorists for intruding into Sabah and killing and decapitating 10 policemen and soldiers in separate clashes on the island.
Malaysia has put Sultan Jamalul and his brother on its wanted list and branded them as terrorists for intruding into Sabah and killing and decapitating 10 policemen and soldiers in separate clashes on the island.
The Sultanate of Sulu and North Borneo continues to lay claim to Sabah. It obtained Sabah from Brunei as a gift for helping put down a rebellion on the Borneo Island. The British leased Sabah and transferred control over the territory to Malaysia after the end of World War II.
But the Sulu Sultanate said it had merely leased North Borneo in 1878 to the British North Borneo Company for an annual payment of 5,000 Malayan dollars then, which was increased to 5,300 Malayan dollars in 1903.
The Sultanate of Sulu was founded in 1457 and is believed to exist as a sovereign nation for at least 442 years. It stretches from a part of the island of Mindanao in the east, to North Borneo, now known as Sabah, in the west and south, and to Palawan, in the north.
Sabah, however, joined Malaya, Sarawak and Singapore to form Malaysia in 1963, after which Malaysia continued paying an annual stipend of 5,300 ringgits to the Sulu sultanate on the basis of the sultanate ceding the Borneo state. In a referendum organised by the Cobbold Commission in 1962, the people of Sabah voted overwhelmingly to join Malaysia. (Mindanao Examiner)
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