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Operation Merdeka

This dispute led the-then Philippine presidents Diosdado Macapagal then later on Ferdinand Marcos to establish special military units tasked with fomenting dissent amongst Sabah's non-Malay ethnic groups, namely the Tausug and Sama, two groups closely aligned ethnically and culturally with Filipinos.

The code-name of this destabilization programme was "Operation Merdeka" (Operation Freedom), with Manuel Syquio as project leader and then Maj. Eduardo Abdul Latif Martelino as operations officer. The object of this program was the annexation of Sabah to the Republic of the Philippines. The plan involved the recruitment of nearly 200 Tausug and Sama Muslims aged 18 to 30 from Sulu Province and Tawi-Tawi and their training in the island-town of Simunul in Tawi-Tawi. Simunul was where the Arab missionary Makhdum built the first mosque in the Philippines in the 13th century. The recruits felt giddy about the promise not only of a monthly allowance, but also over the prospect of eventually becoming a member of an elite unit in the Philippine Armed Forces. From August to December 1967, the young recruits underwent training in Simunul. The name of the commando unit was Jabidah.

On 30 December 1967, 135 to 180 recruits boarded a Philippine Navy vessel for the island of Corregidor in Luzon for "specialized training."

This second phase of the training turned mutinous when the recruits discovered their true mission. It struck the recruits that the plan would mean not only fighting their brother Muslims in Sabah, but also possibly killing their own Tausug and Sama relatives living there. Additionally, the recruits had already begun to feel disgruntled over the non-payment of the promised monthly stipend. The recruits then demanded to be returned home.

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The massacre

The sole survivor of the Massacre, Jibin Arula, recounted how the young Moro recruits were taken in batches of twelve to a remote airstrip where they were executed with machine guns by their military handlers. Arula, who was wounded in the left knee, managed to attach himself to driftwood long enough to be rescued by fishermen from the nearby island of Cavite.

Though there has never been an official count, the number of dead ranges from 28 to 60 according to Philippine government estimates, to over two hundred according to the MNLF.

Aftermath

The truth of the massacre took some time to emerge. In March 1968 Moro students in Manila held a week long protest vigil over an empty coffin marked ‘Jabidah’ in front of the presidential palace. They claimed “at least 28” Moro army recruits had been murdered. Court-martial proceedings were brought against twenty-three military personnel involved. There was also a firestorm in the Philippine press, attacking not so much the soldiers involved, but the culpability of a government administration that would foment such a plot, and then seek to cover it up by wholesale murder.

Despite the court-martial proceedings and a preliminary Supreme Court hearing held in 1970 with Eduardo L. Martelino, Cirilo Oropesa, Teodoro Facelo, Ruperto Amisoto, Alberto Soteco, Solferino Titong, et al. as petitioners, the case disappeared into the thickets of the Philippine justice system and no real punishment was ever handed-down to the accused.

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Insurgency

The main legacy of the Jabidah massacre was the crystallization of Moro discontent and the subsequent formation of the Moro National Liberation Front and, later, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

For years, Muslims of the Philippines had been complaining of official discrimination by consecutive Philippine governments and the Catholic majority. This included discrimination in housing and education, as well as lack of government funding for the majority-Muslim South. Coupled with the official government policy of settling Catholic Filipino emigrants in Mindanao, a class of radical Moro intellectuals emerged, led by student activist Nur Misuari.

The Jabidah Massacre further radicalized Muslims in the Philippines, leading some to take up arms in the style of the CPP. This new organization, formed in the early 1970s and led by Misuari, was named the Moro National Liberation Front. Following a split over the role of Islam in a Bangsamoro state, a new, more conservative movement emerged in 1981, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

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Arula recalled he and the other recruits were brought to the island on January 3, 1968 for training on guerrilla tactics in preparation for "Operation Merdeka," then a top-secret plan of the Marcos administration to invade the east Malaysian state of Sabah which the Philippine claimed as part of its territory.

Their training officers fired at them before dawn on March 18, 1968 after an attempt by the trainees to air their grievances against the officers to Malacañang. Arula, who was hit by a bullet on the left knee, swam for his life across Manila Bay.

Looking back, the 67-year-old survivor admitted that his revelations, which triggered a full-blown Senate inquiry but led to nothing, ruined not only his future but also his children's.

His four children by his first wife did not finish their schooling while his three children by his second wife managed to get some although this was insufficient, he said.

At one point, he became consultant to MNLF leader Nur Misuari, which allowed him to take home P7,000 monthly -- enough to put food on the table and sustain some of the needs of his children in school.

But the rest of his life, he said, was spent in fear and in hiding -- mostly in Antique. For two years now, he has been living with his youngest child in Binondo, Manila for support.

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It was a swift operation.  What the participants remember most is the strong smell of death and decay.  That night, these soldiers burned their clothes which had absorbed the stench.  At the crack of dawn the next day, they loaded the ponchos in the helicopter and flew over Manila Bay.  They tied heavy stones to the ponchos before dumping them all into the sea.  The remains sank, weighted down by the stones.  The soldiers made sure nothing floated to the surface.

At that time, under the iron hand and expansionist tendencies of President Ferdinand Marcos, the killings on Corregidor were never explained.  If Marcos and his men were to be believed, they never happened.  The expose on Jabidah, they said, was part of a grand plot by the opposition to discredit the Marcos regime; furthermore, Jibin Arula, a survivor of the massacre, was an agent planted by Malaysia after it had uncovered Jabidah's purpose.

The Armed Forces top brass never ordered a search for missing persons, living and dead.  No real investigation took place, except for a few Senate and Congressional hearings which yielded inconclusive findings.  The young and intensely energetic opposition Senator Benigno Aquino Jr., using his deft journalistic skills, put some of the pieces of the Jabidah puzzle together, but the picture remained incomplete.  Nevertheless, given the period's secrecy and silence, Aquino's was the most thorough investigation.

Eight officers and 16 enlisted men were court-martialed in 1968.  All of them, however, were cleared in 1971.  No one was held accountable for the gruesome killings on Corregidor that forgotten day in March 1968.

much, much more at http://mnlfnet.com/Articles/Merdeka-Jabidah.htm

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