What Happened to the abducted Sabahans?

ARCHIVES 2010

By admin-s On Mar 2, 2010

Malaysians in Sabah are very concerned about the fate of two fellow Malaysians who were abducted off Semporna Coast, now three weeks passed without any new development.

By Kadayan Journal

Sabahans in particular, are equally concerned about the statement made by the Sabah Commissioner of Police Datuk Noor Rashid Ibrahim. So far it has been a kind of uncertainty in people’s mind not just about the missing of two Sabahans but the way the police authority is handling the issue in Sabah with regard to pirating.

According to media report, the two Sabahans on 7^th January, the manager and the supervisor of seaweed farm were abducted at night at their seaweed farm in Pulau Sebangkat about 8 km off Samporna coast.

Datuk Noor Rashid mentioned that the abductors were using riffles and machete escaped with a pump boat.

A pump boat is a small light boat, predominantly used by Filipinos in this part of the region (see pictures above)

In his statement on January 11^th, Datuk Noor Rashid said, the abductors were still in Sabah.

He also mentioned all exist points have been sealed off and surrounded by police and other agencies, such as-Royal Malaysian Police, Malaysian Navy and Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agencies.

Was informed that unlikely for the abductors to escape. He is also of the opinion that the abductors could be local whose interest was purely for money.

Earlier before the incident there was a commotion among the workers over their wages, and that could be the reason of abduction. Gods knows!

As such the abductors aren’t belonging to any terrorist group like Abu Sayyaf of southern Philippines.

What can we make out of the Sabah Commissioner Police statement so far?

To me this is very understatement by the Sabah Commissioner of Police, Datuk Noor Rashid Ibrahim. He is portraying to the general public in Malaysia that the incident is a small and trivial, for example, using riffles and machete is not typical of pirates of Abu Sayyaf members, giving the impression that this is not a serious incident.

Reading from that statement that since the abductors aren’t using an automatic weapons means. They are petty offenders. And the abductors are local.

With regards to using pump boat Datuk Noor Rashid must be mistaken as to its efficiency both in deep as well as in shallow water. Ask any one who are familiar with this look like flying skate-boat, which is in fact very capable in crossing Sulu Sea with very little difficulty.

My rebuttal to this statement is that the abductors aren’t Sabahans, this is because Sabahans aren’t allowed by the authority for sometime now to use pump boat, which is in everyone’s knowledge in this part of the country.

We Sabahans still think that the abductors are Filipinos from the Southern notorious region of Philippines.

It is hard to imagine the logic that the Sabah police and other enforcement agencies could seal off all the exit points of 1,500 km coastal area of Sabah East Coast. If in fact police and other agencies could seal all exist points why then as of now they can’t stop the illegal immigrants from coming, when they could use the same method.