Valid document: Yong showing the Sultan of Brunei’s letter to the British colonial government.
KOTA KINABALU: The Sulu claim over Sabah “refuses to go away” because the Federal Government is on the wrong track in fighting the issue, says former chief minister Datuk Yong Teck Lee.
He said Putrajaya had recognised the Sulu-Overbeck grant dated Jan 22, 1878, which purportedly gave the colonial trading company rights to Sabah.
(The colonial agreement states that the Sultan of Sulu ceded north Borneo to the merchants Gustavus Baron von Overbeck and Alfred Dent, who in turn would issue an annual payment to the legitimate heirs of the Sulu Sultanate.)
Yong said the Federal Government should stop recognising this because the so-called “Sulu-Overbeck grant” of 1878 was redundant and of no effect.
“In fact, as proven by historical documents, the correct and valid grant to Overbeck is the Dec 29, 1877 Brunei-Overbeck grant,” he said in a statement yesterday.
According to him, a copy of a letter dated July 29, 1963, from the Sultan of Brunei to the British Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations was one of several documents disproving the Philippines/Sulu claim on Sabah.
“In that letter, three weeks after the Malaysia Agreement of July 9, 1963, none other than the Sultan of Brunei himself queried the British about the ‘cession money that is from time to time payable to the State of Brunei in respect of a number of areas in North Borneo and Sarawak’.
“That Brunei letter further proves that Brunei had never ever passed or transferred or in any way caused any part of North Borneo (Sabah) to be passed to Sulu.
“I also told other federal officials at the International Arbitration Colloquium on July 4, 2023, that the relevant document is in Brunei.
“There is no need for Putrajaya to travel all over Europe to fight the Sulu claim. The answer is in Brunei,” he said.
Last week, the top civil court in France rejected an appeal by the so-called heirs of the Sultanate of Sulu, who had wanted US$15bil (RM67bil at current rates) from Malaysia, following a legal battle which arose from a land deal.
The 1878 deal signed between the colonists and the Sultan of Sulu was for use of a territory, which included Sabah.
Following last week’s court decision, Paul Cohen, the lead lawyer for the Sulu group, said that his clients are now free to take action against Sabah.
Yong questioned why the Federal Government had not used the Brunei-Overbeck 1877 grant which could “effectively kill and bury the claim by Sulu”.
He said that he had written twice to Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Law and Institutional Reform) Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said last year to outline the historical facts.
