Sabah churches skip N-Day celebrations

Sep 04, 2014

SABAH: Churches in Sabah skipped this year’s National Day celebrations. Instead, they made Aug 31 a day of prayer to “Remember Sabah our homeland.”

The move to celebrate Sabah’s independence on this day 51 years ago is made in the wake of increasing unhappiness with Putrajaya over the ‘Allah’ issue and Islamisation, land rights and security issues, and the inundation of foreigners who have been given residence and citizenship, among the many issues confronting the Land Below the Wind.

Usually, the Kota Kinabalu City Hall joins hands with the influential Pastors’ Fellowship of Kota Kinabalu (PFKK) to host the National Day celebrations at the town padang or at a public venue.

However this year, churches celebrated the occasion within church premises as part of its Sunday services. Some churches held combined services this Sunday.

The call to prayer had been mass-mail blasted to all churches not only in Sabah but throughout the country in English, Malay and Chinese to explain the context for the call to prayer.

According to the prayer guidelines, this year’s celebrations was to call to remembrance the “forgotten history of Sabah;” that it gained independence on Aug 31, 1963 and not 1957 which is the independence day for Malaya.

However, they would be celebrating Malaysia Day on Sept 16 as a national day as this is the day Malaysia was formed and in which Sabah became an equal partner of Malaya together with Sarawak, and not merely as one of the 14 states and territories.

The Sabah prayer guidelines, in outlining the events that shaped the history of Sabah, also highlights the hurt over the prohibition of the ‘Allah’ word.

“As Sabah is known as the Land Below the Wind, we pray that the wind of the Holy Spirit will sweep over the land, bringing a spiritual reawakening.

“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there will be freedom, so we pray for the wind of the Holy Spirit to blow mightily so everyone is free to call upon the Lord God Almighty in their own language,” the prayer guidelines pointed out.

It also pointed out that the Sabah State Constitution was amended to make Islam the state’s official religion in 1973 despite the assurance that there will be no official religion for Sabah and the guarantee of complete freedom of religion in the 20-point conditions attached to the Malaysia Agreement.

On the influx of illegal immigrants, the prayer guidelines said, “Since 1970s, Sabah has been flooded by illegal immigrants, especially from Southern Philippines and Indonesia, many of whom have been given blue ICs under suspicious circumstances.”

Meanwhile, many Anak Negeri (natives) in the interior of Sabah till today have only been issued ‘red’ ICs, indicating they are stateless persons.

The prayer guidelines also contend that Sabah natives enjoy the same protection and special position as peninsular Malays under Article 153 of the Federal Constitution.

In recalling the history of Sabah, the prayer guidelines point to the provision of border security, self-management of land and resources, self-government for Sabah. But it said the 13 May 1969 racial riots in the peninsula resulted in Sabah getting a poor bargain in petroleum royalties from the Federal Government.

It claims that Sabah was subjected to the Continental Shelf Act 1966 and the Petroleum Mining Act 1966, gazetted under the Emergency Proclamation declared by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong on May 15, 1969 (following the May 13 riots).

It added that Sabah lost her top leaders in the Double six plane crash on June 6, 1976 and two weeks after Sabah signed the Petronas agreement where, “any oil above and beneath the land in Malaysia belongs to the Federal Government.” This was not even brought to the state assembly.

Sabah ceded Labuan as a federal territory to the Federal Government on April 16, 1984, again without reference to the state assembly.

‘We must continue to hope for a great nation’ --malaysiakini.com