The Consumer Association of Sabah and Labuan FT (Cash) lodged a police report in Kota Kinabalu yesterday, urging the authorities to address the unsettling issues over the so-called Philippines' claim on Sabah and a new form of Indonesian confrontation.

"We demand that the government address the pressing fundamental issues of the regularly-revived Sabah claim and the Indonesian confrontation manifested by economic and other mutated ugly incidents, including that of Sipadan and Ligitan, so often neglected by successive governments for more than four decades," Cash deputy president Joshua Kong Yun Chee told malaysiakini after lodging the report.

The report was signed by Cash president Patrick Sindu, Kong and secretary-general Hashima Hasbullah.

The police and the security forces have vested interests in the two major issues arising from Sabah's closest neighbours as it could undermine national security and sovereignty, Cash said.

"We have been living in Sabah through a great deal of fear, danger, disharmony and personal safety when our human rights have been violated so easily from within and without," the report said.

It also claimed that the two issues it mentioned have given birth to 'ethnic cleansing' in collaboration with the Project IC, resulting in an 'apartheid phenomenon' created by dubious citizens, especially 'unqualified' bumiputeras.

It said the root causes could be attributed to recent history when Malaysia came into existence in 1963.

"We have diverted much of our resources to deal with imported problems (gangsterism and lawless culture)," Cash said, adding that "we still encounter sufferings for our local genuine people as the government has not dealt with the underlying root causes."

Orderly conduct

The report also said: "While Malaysia can assume that the claim on Sabah by the Philippines and confrontation by Indonesia are irrelevant, what we go through in Sabah vis-a-vis Malaysia can be identified with those two ugly historic events".

"While we may be independent as far as sovereignty is concerned determined in 1963, we have made ourselves dependent on our neighbours at our own security peril and such peril can mean that we may lose our sovereignty if we do not deal with them objectively and mutually in an era of global cooperation in the region.

"While grievances prevail as far as workers and migrants (legal and illegal) are concerned, we need to have an orderly conduct of our rights in our homeland in the proper perspectives, otherwise the already prevailing 'illegalities" aplenty in all areas would lead to anarchy, the least we would like that to happen in Sabah.

"We are all aware of the challenges and the inherent problems in Sabah over these two major issues but nothing much is done to resolve them except that we are losing our rights over the years to our neighbours when the intention of the Malaysia Agreement for the people in Sabah in 1963 is much downgraded for 44 years pretentiously via the state assembly and the dubious ballot box repeatedly."

Kong told malaysiakini that the same report would be submitted to Suhakam, Parliament, the Sabah Legislative Assembly and the Federal Government.