After a huge setback in its $14.9-billion compensation claim against Malaysia after France’s highest civil court rejected the recent appeal to enforce the award, members of the Sulu Sultanate are now turning to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The Sulu royal family has petitioned the ICC for an even bigger $25 billion in damages against Malaysia for the use of natural resources of North Borneo which was annexed to the Malaysia Federation without the consent of the Sultanate.
Abraham Idjirani, convenor of the Mindanao Sulu Unification Movement (MSUM), told Daily Tribune the damage suit is separate from the $14.9-billion award granted by a French arbitral court.
The petition for damages was archived by the United Nations pending the endorsement of a UN member like the Philippines, China, or the US.
A resolution on the petition stated that the Sultanate asserted its full sovereign, legal and historic rights over the territory of North Borneo (Sabah) from 18 September 2004 onward and demanded that the government of the Federation of Malaysia pay damages totaling $25 billion for the “illegal use of the disputed territory’s natural resources.”
The 2004 petition to the UN was anchored on the 1915 Kiram-Carpenter Agreement of 1947, a 1950 UN Resolution, and the 1885 Monroe Doctrine.
The late Raja Muda Agbimuddin Kiram spearheaded the submission of the petition that was signed by hundreds of followers of the Sulu Sultanate throughout the Sulu Archipelago, Zamboanga Peninsula and Palawan on behalf of the 33rd Sultan Jamalul Kiram III and 34th Sultan Esmail Kiram II and the Bangsa Suluk people.
The Kingdom of Sulu saw the UN as the proper tribunal to resolve the issue of Sabah with Malaysia through the application of related UN principles on modes of pacific settlement of disputes, as a sign of the ruling family’s desire to achieve a complete and peaceful resolution of the issue.