Former colonial master the United Kingdom has been urged to review a 1963 agreement, which allegedly ceded Sarawak and Sabah to the Federation of Malaysia instead of granting the Borneo states full independence.

A human rights NGO, Sarawak Association of People’s Aspiration (Sapa), said that given the record of “oppression, abuses and exploitation” for the last 51 years, Sarawakians, and also Sabahans, now deserved a review of the agreement by the UK.

This is in light of a recent Wall Street Journal report saying that the UK Parliament had urged a review of an agreement to return Hong Kong to China, 30 years after it was signed in 1984.

“How can any self-respecting former colonial master and principal signatory to the Malaysia Agreement stand idly by when one of the signatories repeatedly and deliberately breaks the agreement? This would not be foreign interference,” Sapa’s president Lina Soo said in a press statement.

Soo said Sarawakians and Sabahans could be considered victims of “Britain’s manoeuvres to prolong British interests by creating Malaysia”.

1963 agreement drawn up on 'shaky grounds'

 

Referring to an opinion by Robert Pei, a Sarawak-born lawyer now practising in Australia, Soo said the Malaysia Agreement 1963 was drawn up on shaky grounds.

It may have been “invalidly made and therefore not binding on the parties”, since Sarawak and Sabah did not have any legal capacity to make international agreements then. In 1963, they were still British colonies at the time of signing the agreement, she argued.

Soo said Sapa was not alone in wanting greater autonomy for Sabah and Sarawak.

She noted that the past two years have seen a chorus of civil society movements calling louder and louder for a review of the Malaysia Agreement, amidst demands for self-determination.

This was also highlighted by Independence Day commemorations by Sarawak on July 22 and Sabah on Aug 31 respectively.

In June, a group of Borneo nationalists led by Bingkor assemblyperson Jeffrey Kitingan ( right ) also stood by Sapa’s proposal for a review of the 1963 agreement.

They then held a forum in Kuala Lumpur on the issue to send the signal to Putrajaya that they had a serious cause.

The move earned sympathy from other colonial bashers, such as the Hindraf movement leaders, who are attempting to sue the British government for bringing Indian immigrants to the then-Malaya without adequate protection for their rights, resulting in today’s marginalised Indian community.