CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY — A leader of the Bangsa Moro Sulok people, or Tausugs, on Thursday called on the US Congress to review the 1915 Carpenter-Kiram Agreement and decide whether to enforce or abrogate the treaty to correct what he called a “historical error” that “illegally annexed Mindanao and Sulu to the Commonwealth government in 1935.”

Abraham Idjirani, convenor of the Mindanao and Sulu reunification movement told DAILY TRIBUNE the Carpenter-Kiram treaty had complicated the US declaration of Philippine independence as it violated a standing and live treaty enacted by the US Congress in 1915.

The treaty provided that:

• The US Government recognized the power of the Sultan of Sulu that are associated with his ecclesiastical authority;

• The US Government agreed, committed to, and gave its sacred and solemn promise to place the Sultanate of Sulu under its protectorate and flag;

• The US Government assured the Sultan of Sulu a full measure of protection should the question of North Borneo arise in the future between him and any foreign authority; and,

• The US Government declared that the termination of the Temporal Sovereignty of the Sultanate of Sulu did not mean an end to his continued Temporal Sovereignty over a territory lying elsewhere outside the Territory under US jurisdiction.

The Kiram-Carpenter Carpenter Agreement was signed on 22 March 1915.

Idjirani said the fundamental issue now was whether the United States’ incorporation of Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan in the Philippine Commonwealth in 1935 was legal as it was done without the abrogation of the 1915 Kiram-Carpenter Agreement through an issuance of a US Congressional Act by the United States Congress.

Kiram-Carpenter agreement

In the Introductory Statement of the 1915 Kiram-Carpenter Agreement, the US recognized that the Sultanate of Sulu had been for more than 400 years an independent sovereignty prior to the American occupation and rule.

Earlier proponents of the Movement for the Independence of Mindanao (MIM) will seek the help of the US Congress to restore the status of Mindanao and Sulu as a protectorate of the United States as provided for in the Carpenter-Kiram treaty which declared Mindanao under the protection of the United States.

“Mindanao was never part of the territory ceded by Spain to the US and the 1898 Treaty of Paris did not bind the Sultanate of Sulu and all other sultanates in mainland Mindanao and the Indigenous People to adhere to its mandate, Idjirani said.

The group said Spain anchored its cession of all territories of the Sultanate of Sulu on claims of sovereignty through treaty rights founded on establishing friendship and commerce which were not sovereign as Spain had not attained even the form of a de facto government in Mindanao and Sulu.

For this reason, the US Government was compelled to negotiate for a peace agreement with the Sultan of Sulu after General Bates and the American occupying forces in Jolo in August 1899 observed that the Spaniards controlled only the walled city they had built outside the walls of the Sultanate of Sulu that continued to exercise its sovereign power and authority.

So an agreement known as the Kiram-Bates Treaty/Agreement was entered into and signed on 20 August 1899.

But the Kiram-Bates treaty was abrogated in 1904 as the American Politico-Military Authority saw it as a legal obstacle to the implementation of the indivisible sovereignty rights which the United States acquired under the 20 December 1898 Treaty of Paris.

“As a matter of fact, Spain continued to claim a de facto government over Sibutu and Cagayan de Sulu, now called Mapun municipality, even after the signing of the Treaty of Paris until the US and Spain signed a subsequent treaty called the Cession of Sulu and Its Underlying Islands on 7 November 1900. The US paid Spain 100,000 US dollars,” Idjirani said.

Treaty of Paris

Thus, Article 1, Section 1 of the Philippine Constitution that defines the national boundary of the Philippines quoted in part: “By virtue of the 10 December 1898 Treaty of Paris..... and the Cessions of Sulu and Its Underlying Islands.... modified by the Convention Treaty of 2 January 1930..... All these referred to all territory ceded and excluded under the 1898 Treaty of Paris.”

From that date, the US Government started to execute their rule which met resistance from 1904 to 1913 from the Sultanate of Sulu in four major battles between the American forces and the Bangsa Sulu people.

The four major battles were the Battle of Bud (Mount) Dahu, Battle of Sinumaan, Battle of Patian, and the Battle of Bud Bagsak, and many other skirmishes with groups that resisted the American occupation and rule.