Jabidah Massacre

Operation Merdeka
Part of North Borneo dispute
Date 1967–1968 Location Philippines and Sabah, Malaysia Result Mutiny Jabidah massacre Beginning of Moro insurgency Malaysia temporarily suspends diplomatic ties with the Philippines
Belligerents
Philippines	Malaysia  •  Sabah
Commanders and leaders
Ferdinand Marcos Eduardo Abdul Latif Martelino	Sultan Ismail Nasiruddin Shah Tunku Abdul Rahman Mustapha Harun

The Jabidah massacre was the alleged killing of Moro soldiers by members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) on 18 March 1968. It is also known as the Corregidor massacre as the killing took place on Corregidor Island in the Philippines.

Author Cesar Adib Majul said that the state, at that point in time, had suppressed the affair in the interest of national unity which therefore led to little or no documentation on the incident. This then led to speculations on the number of trainees killed, varying from 11 to 68 and the reasons behind the massacre.

Some Filipino authors maintained that the massacre never happened. Rigoberto Tiglao, an activist previously incarcerated during the martial law, contends that Jabidah massacre was a ploy by the Liberal Party to fatally blow President's Marcos re-election bid. Teddy Boy Locsin, a former reporter of the Philippine Free Press which was shut down during martial law, also reportedly said that Sen. Benigno Aquino, Jr. directed him to invent and write false reports about the incident to frustrate the plans of President Marcos to occupy Sabah by peaceful means to benefiting on the territory rich resources and oil.

The north-eastern part of Sabah had been under the rule of the Sulu Sultanate since it was given to them by the Sultanate of Brunei in 1658 for the Sulu Sultanate's help in settling a civil war in Brunei before being "ceded" (in which a translation in Tausug/Philippine Malay translated the word as padjak) to the British in 1878. During the process of decolonisation by the British after World War II from 1946, Sabah was integrated as part of the Malaysian Federation in 1963 under the Malaysia Agreement. The Philippine government however protested this, claiming the eastern part of Sabah had never been sold to foreign interests, and that it had only been "leased" (padjak) by the Sulu Sultanate, and therefore remained the property of the Sultan, and by extension, the property of Republic of the Philippines. Diplomatic efforts to Malaysia and the United Nations during the administration of President Diosdado Macapagal proved futile. On 13 September 1963, the United Nations held a referendum over Sarawak and Sabah, and the people voted to form the Federation of Malaysia.

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