Ancient treaty adds Sabah under U.S. cover

Cagayan de Oro City — The movement to declare certain parts of Mindanao as a territory under the jurisdiction of the United States of America said that Sabah, disputed by Malaysia and the Philippines, should be part of it.

The 1915 Carpenter-Kiram treaty included the island of North Borneo (Sabah) among territories placed under US protection while under a lease to a British company, long before the Federation of Malaysia was created, the convenor of the Mindanao and Sulu Unification Movement (MSUM) said on Friday.

Abraham Idjirani, convenor and spokesman of the newly created Mindanao and Sulu Unification Movement, said that when the Carpenter-Kiram treaty was signed in 1915, the US government assured the Sultan of Sulu of protection should the question of North Borneo arise in the future, and 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.

However, Idjirani said, the British government had negotiated to exclude Sabah from US protection after the Philippines was ceded by Spain under the 1898 Treaty of Paris and later with both countries signing the Convention Treaty of 2 January 1930 where both Western nations reached a mutual agreement to place North Borneo under British protection.

He said both the British and the US divided the ancestral territories of the Sultanate of Sulu as a US protectorate with Sabah under British authority.

“The concurrence of the US to the wish of the British grossly violated its sacred commitment and assurance of full measure of protection between the Sultan and any foreign authorities should the question of North Borneo arise in the future between the Sultan and any foreign authority,” Idjirani said.