The Sabah
Sulu Arbitration
The Sabah
Sulu Arbitration
Welcome to the website of the successful Claimants in the case of the Sulu Heirs against Malaysia (Fornan et al. v. Malaysia). Shortly, we will publish parallel French and Spanish versions of this site.
Here you will find facts, documents and extensive details about the history, progress and disposition of the legal case.
In short: In 2013 and since, the Malaysia Government has created a political crisis for itself, and is dressing it up as a threat to its own sovereignty.
It triggered an arbitration on Sabah, and negligently failed to manage the case. And now it is retrospectively using a barrage of PR, and an unashamed campaign of political leverage in several countries to try to discredit that arbitration in the hope that across the world judges will be loath to recognize the internationally legitimate result. At the same time, many Malaysian politicians seem determined to mislead their own people as to how we all got here. That is understandable — it’s pretty embarrassing if you are an elected official.
This website tackles the subject in many ways.
Not all readers have the same requirements.
FAQs
You might just want to look at the FAQs, which cover many of the common sense questions, and many of the allegations – often misleading – that the Malaysian or even the Spanish Governments have put out there.
The Story
If you want a quick understanding, go to the section Current Status section. If you want to go deep, and see how this all happened, please read the Story, which is in four parts. This latter is particularly useful for any Malaysian or Spanish citizens who may be wondering what on earth is going on in their politics and courts. You won’t get this from your own governments.
Key Documents and Chronology
We have a detailed Chronology.
We also have also a section dedicated to the Key Legal Documents, which are referred to repeatedly within this website.