Ignored Sultan’s Malaysia Invasion Risks Peace: Southeast Asia
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When Philippine President Benigno Aquino signed a peace deal with Muslim rebels in October, the 74-year-old sultan of Sulu sat in a wheelchair at the ceremony waiting for someone to speak with him. Nobody did.
“It turned out we were just decorations,” Sultan Jamalul Kiram said in an interview yesterday at his two-story house on Manila’s outskirts, where he stays while receiving dialysis treatment for kidney failure. “My wife and I felt like we were treated like flower vases. I felt bad. It was terrible. They ignored the sultan of Sulu.”