Fleeing Filipinos claim bloody crackdown

Philippines officials claim there are now close to a thousand refugees from Sabah in Sulu and Tawi-Tawi and more on the smaller islands.

KOTA KINABALU: Fearful Filipinos, many with papers stating they are Malaysian, are reportedly fleeing the state in small boats to escape an alleged crackdown by police on suspected supporters of Sultan Jamalul Kiram III of Sulu.

Claims of shooting and beatings at the hands of the police are being made by those who landed in Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, the Inquirer, a Philippines web news portal reported yesterday.

“They dragged all the males outside the house, kicked and hit them,” it quoted Amira Taradji recounting her family’s ordeal in Sandakan.

The Inquirer said that Taradji, 32, arrived in Patikul on Friday night with about 200 other refugees alleging that Malaysian policemen had ordered Filipino men to run as fast as they could and then opened fire on them.

She claimed that among those killed that way on Monday night during a “zoning operation” by police in a Filipino community in Sandakan was her brother, Jumadil.

Taradji, originally from Calinan in Davao City, is reportedly among some 400 people who have arrived in Sulu from Lahad Datu, Semporna, Tawau and Kunak since the start of a week as violence triggered by followers of Kiram who took over Kg Tanduo in Lahad Datu a month ago in what they called a “homecoming” expedition.

According to Philippines officials, there are now close to a thousand refugees from Sabah in Sulu and Tawi-Tawi and hundreds more on smaller islands in Philippines waters. Many more are expected to make the sea crossing.

Taradji told the Inquirer that the constant raids by Malaysian security forces was harrowing and said Filipinos she encountered before leaving Sabah said they too had witnessed Filipino men being rounded up in Tawau and Kunak.

She alleged that some of the arrested men, who tried to dissuade the police from arresting them by waving immigration documents, were killed just the same for trying to evade the raiders.

“Even if you have valid immigration document, you will not be spared. If you are lucky to reach the jail, you will die of starvation because they will not feed you,” Taradji told the Inquirer, adding she has lived in Sandakan since she was a child.

She said that though she and here family are MyKad holders, they abandoned their home when the police raids started on Monday night claiming that the police were ruthless.

Taradji said she and her family sailed from Sandakan to nearby islands … “from one island to another—until we reached a small island where we took a kumpit for the Philippines.”

Another of those who made it back to the Philippines, Carla Manlaw, 47, said it was fear of the Malaysian policemen following stories of the abuse and killings that prompted her and other Filipinos to sail to Bongao in Tawi-Tawi, according to the Inquirer.

It said Manlaw and 99 others, including children and the elderly, arrived in Philippines waters aboard two motorboats after sailing for about two hours from Sandakan. They were intercepted and escorted by a Philippine Navy ship until they reached Bongao late Friday.

She said that while her employer in Sandakan had no problem with employing her, she was scared of the police and “what they will do to us.”

She told the Inquirer that when she heard that a vessel was returning to Bongao from Sandakan, she immediately grabbed her things and boarded it.

The news portal also quoted Jolo’s Mayor Hussin Amin as saying that the accounts of abuses by Malaysian police were so “alarming and disturbing” that the national government should look into them.

‘Credible stories’
He told the Inquirer that he had spoken with a lot of evacuees and the stories were the same:  Malaysian soldiers and policemen were not making any distinction between illegal immigrants and those issued MyKad cards.

“Soldiers and policemen stormed their houses and even those with legitimate working papers like passports and IC papers were not spared.

“These documents were allegedly torn down before their eyes. Men were told to run and were shot if they did. Those who refused were beaten black and blue. Filipinos inside the jail were executed,” it quoted him as saying evacuees told him.

He said that refugees from Sabah all recounted the same ordeal and if what they say can be verified, then Malaysian authorities were not just targeting the Kirams in Lahad Datu.

The refugees stories seemed credible, he told the Inquirer, as the children and women were deeply traumatised when they observed Philippines police personnel scrutinising them and how “some even attempted to jump off to the sea, thinking they were still in Malaysia.”

The Inquirer quoted social welfare officials as saying they anticipated more than a thousand Filipinos from Sabah will be arriving in the next few days and fearing that the sheer number of the expected returnees would pose a bigger logistics problem than what the 2002 deportation of Filipinos from Sabah caused.

Some 64,000 Filipino illegal immigrants were deported from Sabah in 2002 and feeding or relocating them proved to be a nightmare for Philippines officials.

The problem for many returnees is how to earn a living in the Philippines. Most have just a bit of money for food and other needs for a few days and the future is bleak.

“We do not even know which way is Calinan now,” Taradji told the Inquirer, adding that the Philippines was now a foreign land to her and her family after living for the past 26 years in Sabah.

Manlaw said the same when she spoke with the Inquirer in Bongao.

“We have no future here, unlike in Sabah where we had clear jobs and livelihood,” she said.

Malaysian authorities however have urged everyone not to pay heed to rumours, stating that the Malaysian forces were only in the lookout for the Sulu militants.