The entrance to the first site of the standoff in Kampung Tanduo, now a Malaysian Army camp. The signboard reads (in Malay), "Welcome to the Tanduo Village Camp. Caution! You have entered a military camp. Please maintain your discipline!". Location map of the standoff
Date
11 February – 24 March 2013[8] (1 month, 1 week and 6 days)
Note: All these total only during the standoff and does not include the total in any further actions.
The 2013 Lahad Datu standoff, also known as the Lahad Datu incursion or Operation Daulat (Malay: Operasi Daulat), was a military conflict in Lahad Datu, Malaysia.[8] The conflict began on 11 February, when 235 militants[17] arrived in Lahad Datu by boat, and ended on 24 March.[15][27][28] The militants, self proclaimed as "Royal Security Forces of the Sultanate of Sulu and North Borneo",[15] were sent by Jamalul Kiram III, a claimant to the throne of the Sultanate of Sulu.
The militants' stated objective was to assert the territorial claim of the Philippines to eastern Sabah.[29] Malaysian security forces surrounded the village where the group had gathered. After weeks of negotiations and several deadlines for the group to withdraw, the killing of local policemen prompted Malaysian security forces to flush out the militants with a military operation.[30] At the end of the standoff around 72 people were left dead, including 56 militants, 10 Malaysian security force personnel, and 6 civilians. The surviving militants were all either captured or escaped. 9 of the captured Filipino militants were sentenced to death for waging war against the Yang di-Pertuan Agong by the Court of Appeal of Malaysia in 2017,[31] and have their death sentence upheld by the Federal Court of Malaysia in 2018.[32][33] Even when Malaysia abolished mandatory death penalty in 2023, which allows all death row inmates to filed for a review on their death sentence to the Federal Court, the Federal Court in 2024 continue to uphold the death sentence for 7 out of the 9 Filipino militants (the other 2 Filipinos died while in prison).[34][35][36]
The Lahad Datu incursion has had lasting impacts for the people of Sabah.[37] Before this incursion, the government of Malaysia continued to dutifully pay an annual cession payment amounting to roughly $1,000 to the indirect heirs of the Sultan honoring an 1878 agreement, where North Borneo – today’s Sabah – was conceded by the late Sultan of Sulu to a British company.[38][39] However, Malaysia suspended these payments in response to this attack that killed civilians and members of the Malaysian armed forces. In 2019, eight of these Sulu heirs, who insisted they were not involved in the standoff, hired lawyers to pursue legal action based on the original commercial deal.[40] These litigations would later be known as the Malaysia Sulu case, which spanned across multiple jurisdictions in Europe such as Spain, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, as the purported Sulu heirs tried to enforce a seizure of roughly $14.9 billions of Malaysia's foreign assets through forum shopping. However, all attempts by the purported Sulu heirs were ultimately defeated by the Malaysian government and the seizure order was quashed by the courts in all four aforementioned European countries by November 2024.[41][42][43][44]
^ abMichael Lim Ubac (7 March 2013). "Aquino: I won't allow Sulu sultan to drag PH into war with Malaysia". Philippine Daily Inquirer. Archived from the original on 24 July 2014. Retrieved 7 March 2013. President Aquino said in a statement, 'I appeal to you (Jamalul Kiram III) — we should be really clear on this — this incident is wrong. If this is wrong, why should we (the government) lend support to this? We should support what is right... which will lead us to brighter prospects; the wrong option will only bring us ruin. That's it, that's my simple message.' He also added 'Let's not forget: What they (the Jamalul Kiram III faction) are pushing for is their right as so-called heirs of the sultan of Sulu. It's not yet clear if their rights have been transferred to the Philippines. But we (the Philippines citizens and our nation) will all be affected by their conflict (with Malaysia).'
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