Word: sulu
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Philippines v. Malaysia: At the heart of what so far remains this war of words is, quite fittingly, one particular word. That is padjak, which today in Malay means "mortgage" or "pawn" but a century ago meant "to lease" or "to cede." The issue is whether the Sultan of Sulu in 1878 ceded his rights to Sabah, as the Malaysians claim, or simply leased those rights, as is maintained in Manila. There is nothing much new about the Philippine claim-former President Diosdado Macapagal raised it during his election campaign in 1961. It remained a relatively minor issue until this...
...more complicated quarrels on the international scene, but is not without a certain fascination of its own. The plot goes something like this; Sabah is a 29,000-sq.-mi. chunk of Borneo, rich in timber, rubber, tobacco and untapped mineral wealth. It is located in the Sulu Sea only 20 miles from the southernmost Philippine Islands. Once a haunt of Moro pirates, Sabah was signed over in perpetuity to the British in 1878 by its ruler, the Sultan of Sulu, in return for an annual honorarium of 5,000 Straits dollars (now worth $1,700). In 1963, when colonialism...
Sabah's mixed population of 600,000 consider themselves Malaysian and like it. But the nearby Philippine Sulu islanders would like to share in Sabah's booming economy, and that is how Manila gets into the act. The Philippine Sulus are putting considerable pressure on the Manila government to get hold of the territory. Acting for the Sultan's heirs, who live in the Philippines, the Manila government claims that the original agreement merely leased Sabah to the British instead of ceding it. Last month, talks in Bangkok broke down, and Manila threatened to withdraw its ambassador...
...income is only $120 a year. Fully 6% of the population is unemployed, and a third of all Filipinos work only three months a year. Manila's wealthy suburb of Forbes Park glitters with swimming pools, but children starve to death regularly in the shack towns along the Sulu Sea. Daughters of wealthy Manila socialites sport names like "Ting-Ting" and take ballet lessons, while at an annual festival at Obando, childless women perform a rhythmic fertility dance coaxing the saints to help them conceive. Polo is played in Manila, but headhunting is occasionally still the game...
...scheme. Oblivious to Malaya's success against Red infiltration, the Philippines feared that leftists would ultimately take over the new nation, thus putting a Communist neighbor right on their doorstep. Dusting off an old claim to North Borneo, the Philippines maintained that in 1878 the Sultan of Sulu had only "leased," not sold, the territory to the British. London stiffly rejected the Filipino claim to the region...