Malaysia is stirring anger among Filipinos. Seriously. Thanks to the media who never fails to sensationalize and add to the emotional concoction of the situation. So now, Philippines and Malaysia are beginning to dip into hostile waters.

The Philippines has already launched a diplomatic protest against Malaysia over the deportation of thousands of Filipinos from their Sabah territory, which coincidentally the Philippines also lay territorial claim on. But that is another story. It may be not. Malaysia may be kicking out the close to a million Filipinos in Sabah to protect their claim. Maybe not. But all in all, it is still Malaysia’s interest which is on top. As it was said in one editorial from the Philippine Inquirer, “Manila is not in the mood to revive the Sabah claim. Nor is it inclined to rock the boat of the now relatively calm relations it has with Kuala Lumpur. There is, therefore, no reason for Malaysia to be nervous over the large Filipino presence in Sabah or to emulate the Nazis’ methods of dealing with unwanted people.”

Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos have been deported on small fishing boats. Its scene would remind you of illustrations of the Vietnamese boat people refugees.

Can we blame Malaysia?

But the situation is more complex than that. A large portion of the inhabitants of Sabah are Filipinos, many of them undocumented and therefore considered “illegals.” They have lived in Sabah because the Filipinos in the Sulu archipelago considered the former British North Borneo a part of the Sultanate of Sulu long before it was annexed by the British under questionable circumstances. Travel between Sulu and Sabah has been relatively easy, with no visas required. Moreover, Filipinos in Sabah are not parasites living off the Malaysian economy; they hold jobs in Malaysian plantations.

- Nazis next door

And here’s a story for today. 13 children dead in Sabah exodus.

But then again. Our own government is partly to blame. In fairness, Malaysia has warned the government of their crackdown on illegal aliens. Knowing that hundreds of thousands of Filipinos are illegally in Sabah, the Philippine government didn’t seem to have done anything about it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 29th, 2002 at 7:07 pm and is filed under Social Babble . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.