On the Fluidity and Stability of Personal Memory: Jibin Arula and the Jabidah Massacre in the Philippines

Abstract

For many Muslims across the Southern Philippines and beyond, March 18 is a day that evokes memories both intensely emotional as well as political. In their imagination and the rhetoric of the elites in their midst, it marks a crucial moment in the history of the Philippines that laid the foundation for a protracted secessionist movement in the Muslim South. On that day in 1968, military trainees on an island known as Corregidor were killed. Over a hundred young men, mostly Muslims and hailing from various ethnolinguistic groups, had been recruited by the military into a special guerrilla training aimed at destabilizing Sabah—a vast land space that formed a part of the newly created Malaysia but was construed by the Philippine government as rightfully theirs. Months of intense jungle amphibious training had created much apprehension among the recruits. Things came to a head when the recruits’ remunerations were withheld and when the supply of basic provisions in the training camp ran short. The soldiers protested and mutinied, and their superiors reacted violently. On the night when the men were supposed to be sent back home, shots were heard that left a dozen or so¹ Muslim soldiers dead.