Sleepless villagers long to return to bombed homes

Media are barred from entering Embara Budi community hall. - Pictures by Siow Feng

LAHAD DATU, March 7 — Tired of being squeezed with some 650 people into a community hall here with only four toilets, some villagers want to return to their flattened homes in Kampung Tanduo, which was taken over by Sulu gunmen last month.

The Kampung Tanduo residents said that they fled their village on February 12 to Kampung Tanjung Labian with just the clothes on their backs after some 200 Sulu gunmen arrived, but were forced to flee again to the Embara Budi community hall here last Monday as they feared the intrusion of the southern Filipino militants.

“We sleep on the cement floor; no blankets, mattresses or pillows,” Ben Harun told The Malaysian Insider yesterday.

“It is uncomfortable. I can’t sleep well. There are too many people,” added the fisherman who was born in Kampung Tanduo, which is a seaside village in eastern Sabah.

Media are barred from entering Embara Budi community hall. - Pictures by Siow Feng

Erlinda Hamid says no sanitary pads are provided.

Ben, 48, said that most of the villagers staying in the Embara Budi community hall are women and children, who are not placed separately from the men. Families sleep together in the blue-roofed hall.

Despite losing all his property and livestock — including 100 goats, 38 cows and 100 chickens — after Kampung Tanduo was pounded by air strikes last Tuesday, Ben longed to go home.

“I hope to return to Tanduo... we are suffering here,” said Ben, who was wearing a black T-shirt and checked trousers.

He pointed out that he has been wearing the same clothes for days and that he would just don a sarong after he washes those clothes.

The villagers at the hall yesterday received family rations including two bags of rice, two packs of chocolate biscuits, 10 tines of sardines, two tins of condensed milk, one bag of oil, one pack of fine salt and one bag of sugar.

“We cook food once or twice a day. We must save, if not it’ll be difficult,” said Ben.

The Embara Budi hall that houses 650.

Ben Harun says that people sleep on the cement floor without mattresses, pillows or blankets.

Children ran about outside the hall and in a nearby playground with rusty swings as The Malaysian Insider interviewed Ben through the fence. The police prohibited media from entering the hall that was mostly filled with villagers from Kampung Tanjung Labian.

It is understood that several hundred villagers have also been placed at a small town called Fajar Harapan, which is similarly off-limits to the press.

Clothes were hung to dry on the barbed fence surrounding the Embara Budi hall, and even on bushes outside the building.

“I hope to return to Tanduo... we are suffering here,” said Ben

The hall, which is located at a Felda Sahabat plantation, is surrounded by oil palm trees. Felda Sahabat has 57 plantations and is twice the size of Singapore. It is spread out across a hilly terrain with straight, narrow roads that the occasional egret crosses.

Embara Budi is located some 5km from Kampung Tanjung Labian. Gunfire could be heard yesterday afternoon from a checkpoint near the village.

Several military and police vehicles zoomed past the hall yesterday, even as the authorities announced that the search operations have been expanded from Kampung Tanduo to Kampung Tanjung Batu.

Armed Forces chief Gen Tan Sri Zulkifeli Mohd Zin admitted yesterday that the nine bodies found were of Filipino militants killed during last Friday’s shootout. Three more bodies have yet to be discovered. One Sulu militant was shot dead yesterday morning, bringing the total Sulu casualties here to 13.

Self-proclaimed princess Jacel Kiram reportedly said yesterday that Sulu militant leader Agbimuddin Kiram and his group of Sulu sultanate followers survived last Tuesday’s aerial assault since invading Kampung Tanduo on February 9.

Kampung Tanduo resident Erlinda Hamid, 22, said sanitary pads were not provided at the hall.

Assaffal Alian says people want to go back home as soon as possible.

“I really wish to go home,” she said, as she breastfed her one-year-old daughter at a nearby cousin’s house that was filled with flies.

Kampung Tanjung Labian community leader Assaffal Alian, who is a Dusun, said that the rations were supplied by the National Security Council.

“Of course we want to go back as soon as possible. Life is not as normal as it’s supposed to be,” said Assaffal, 48, adding that he arrived at the Embara Budi hall last Monday.

Many southern Filipinos fled to Sabah in the 1970s to escape the civil war in Mindanao.

The sultanate of Sulu, which is a province in the southern Philippines, claims Sabah as its ancestral land and insists that it has done no wrong in intruding into the Borneo state.

Factory worker Farizan Bayah, 23, said that people have stopped harvesting palm oil, pointing to the dense oil palm plantations along the way to the Embara Budi hall.

“People are scared of getting kidnapped,” he said.