“Jabidah Massacre”

The so-called "Jabidah massacre" was the assassination of 24 Muslim

Tausug recruits being trained by the military to infiltrate Sabah and instigate
an uprising among their ethnic group against the Malaysian government on
Corregidor Island on March 18, 1968. The revolt would be used as a
justification for the Philippine military to invade Sabah, which the Philippines
had declared to be part of its territory, according to Marcos' armed forces'
Operation Merdeka (Freedom). Our country had a stronger military at the time
than the Federation of Malaysia, which had only been founded in 1963. Two
dozens of the Muslim youths who were recruited for Merdeka were
purportedly killed because they decided to resign, complaining of poor food
and low salary. Therefore, in the MNLF's myth-making, the cause was
modified to be noble, with Muslims refusing to fight their Muslim Malaysian
brothers. It was a clever interpretation of a fictional story. When the top-secret
Merdeka was made public, Sabah's first Chief Minister, Tun Mustafa, was
furious and agreed to pay the MNLF and let them to use Sabah as a base and
refuge. Mustafa also arranged for 201 MNLF militants, including Murad
Ibrahim, the current chairman of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, to be
trained in Sabah by former British Special Action Service officers who served
as the Muslim organizations' officers' corps. Malaysia's assistance has thus
played a significant role in the expansion of the Muslim insurgency. Arula has
been the only witness to ‘Jabidah.'. Arula would be the only witness to the
massacre, and the fact that he was "handled" by Montano who despised
Marcos for defeating him in the 1967 gubernatorial elections would be crucial
in piecing together what Jabidah was actually about, as I'll describe in the next
sentence of this series. Arula claimed that he was forced to line up with 24
other Muslim trainees at the Corregidor airstrip in the early morning of March
18, 1968, and then shot by their trainers. He stated that he was hit in the leg
and ran, rolled down a hill, hid in the bushes, and swam for hours in the
"shark-infested" Manila Bay until he was rescued by fishermen hours later,
who immediately transported him to Montano. Arula's story was so amazing,
like something out of a B-grade action movie, that it was clearly scripted as
part of a very well scenario. How could a poor, illiterate Muslim who was
wounded in the leg on March 18 survive a near-death experience and then file
a complaint against the military in a Cavite court five days later? Even wealthy
crime victims must wait months to submit a complaint against regular
residents, and even longer to pursue a case against those in positions of
power, such as the military. According to my research, National artist Nick
Joaquin as Quijano de Manila, then a journalist writing in the most respected
magazine at that time, “the Philippine Free Press”, narrated based on his
interview with Ninoy: “Upon interviewing Arula, the sole witness to the alleged
massacre, Aquino 2nd realized that for a second-grade dropout, this self
styled survivor of an alleged massacre had an amazing photographic memory
and he cited a litany of 48 names in full and retraced the elaborate unfolding
of events, including the departure of the exact number of men from the camp,
batch after batch.” and It is certainly one of the curious features of modern
society that myths and so-called urban legends survive for decades.
Therefore, Ninoy didn’t join the mob condemning the massacre. He traveled
to Jolo to look at the facts and search for the family of the Muslim teenagers
who were allegedly slaughtered, like he had done before. In his famous
privilege address to the Senate on March 28, 1968, with the misleading title
"Jabidah! Special Forces of Evil?," Ninoy presented major, even fatal, doubts
about Arula's assertion based on data he acquired himself. There hasn’t been
a single victim of the “Jabidah massacre” ever identified. For an ethnic group
known for its close yet expanded kinship system, no relative has ever claimed
his brother, son, cousin, or husband was killed in Corregidor. Contrary to
popular belief, then Senator Benigno Aquino did not believe Jibin Arula who
claimed to be the massacre’s sole survivor. For him, the massacre reeked of
a hoax However, he did accuse President Ferdinand Marcos of plotting to
build up a personal elite force for his garrison state, as well as planning for the
takeover of Sabah. Rigoberto Tiglao even states that the Jabidah Massacre
was in fact a brilliant propaganda campaign pulled off by Malaysia, a belief
accepted again by Ninoy. We don’t have to believe Ninoy’s conclusions,
though. Just examine the facts what happened to Arula, what happened to the
military officers charged, and what happened to the Jabidah allegations
subsequently? I’ll discuss these on Wednesday, and the very sad reason why
the Jabidah allegations were hurled in the first place.