KOTA KINABALU: The sprawling village by the sea, with over 400 houses, all of them on stilts, was eerily quiet. But it also hid a horrific sight.
As The Star’s associate editor P.K. Katharason and Sabah bureau chief Datuk Muguntan Vanar walked into the nearly empty neighbourhood, they could only gape at what they saw.
There were human body parts and internal organs on the blood-soaked floors inside and along the stilted wooden walkways of the house.
This was Kg Simunul in Semporna, about 36 hours after Sulu gunmen had ambushed and brutally dismembered six Malaysian special branch officers and men on the night of March 2, 2013.
PK and Mugu, as Katharason and Muguntan are known, were both shocked when they realised that the gunmen had held and tortured the policemen.
The bodies of the fallen men were pulled out after the firefight that had also killed a few of the gunmen. The others had escaped in speedboats parked under the stilt houses.
A day after the shooting, journalists and photographers from all over the country, as well as foreign media, had just been allowed to enter the red zone to see firsthand what was going on.
As the pair of journalists went down the walkway, a woman seated in a corridor asked in Filipino-accented English: “Where are you from?”
On being told that they were journalists, the woman told them not to go any further, saying, “Bad people are still there.”
Both PK and Mugu were puzzled. Police had just cleared the area, but they both decided not to press their luck any further as they spotted four other youths in their 20s watching them closely and blocking the walkway to the houses and the seafront further down.
The youths spoke little, only telling the journalists that they had stayed back to look after their houses. Both PK and Mugu knew something was not right and dropped the idea of walking any further into the village.
They could have ended up being kidnapped or ambushed if they had indeed gone ahead.
The bloody ambush in Semporna’s Kg Siminul was the second front of the Lahad Datu intrusion by a group of self-proclaimed heirs of the defunct Sulu Sultanate, led by Agbimuddin Kiram, a self-proclaimed crown prince of the Sulu Sultan Jamalul Kiram.
Some 200 members of the army and generals of the defunct Sulu sultanate had also intruded into Kg Tanduo, Lahad Datu, in Feb 2013.
The intrusion was probably one of the most difficult stories for reporters to cover.
Unlike Sabah’s east coast cross-border kidnappings by Filipino gunmen, where the perpetrators’ and victims’ locations could be quickly assessed, this incident took a different shape with the gunmen occupying Kg Tanduo and making ancestral land claims.
Adding to the difficulty, continuous rumours of fresh intrusions or incidents spread daily from village to village along these Sabah east coast districts.
Logistically, it was a widespread area, with Kg Tanduo itself about 100km from Lahad Datu town, where PK and Mugu had based themselves before colleagues Ruben Sario, Stephanie Lee and photographer Normimie Diun joined to back up the team.
Colleagues and photographers, including Philip Golingai and Azhar Mahrof, along with the then Star Media Group managing director cum chief executive officer Datuk Seri Wong Chun Wai, all came to help.
Despite police orders not to enter Kg Tanduo, reporters and photographers tried to get into the area, and all had scary stories to tell of encounters with gunmen.
Mugu recalled that during the interviews with residents who had fled Kg Tanduo to Kg Batu, there was always a group of young men standing and watching them. They felt uncomfortable with their presence but never asked or said anything.
Once, as PK and Mugu walked down the beach from Kg Batu towards Kg Tanduo, they read freshly written words in the sand: “Ini Tanah, Kami Punya” (This land is ours).
“For us, it became apparent that the intruders in Kg Tanduo were going in and out of Kg Batu and neighbouring kampungs within the Tanjung Labian area.
“As outsiders, we probably encountered these Sulu foot soldiers who blended in with the locals. It was difficult for us to tell them apart,” said Mugu.
On March 5, Malaysia launched Ops Daulat, a full-scale air and ground offensive to flush out the militants, securing Kg Tanduo on March 10. The Malaysian flag was raised and the Eastern Sabah Security Command (Esscom) established.
Security forces secured Kg Tanduo and the surrounding areas. Agbimuddin, however, managed to escape from Kg Batu in a speedboat back to the neighbouring Philippines.
“Following the offensive, PK, our colleague Philip and I decided to drive back into Tanjung Labian area, but as we closed in, we worried about encountering desperate militants on the run.
“We were also concerned about being caught in a friendly fire by our own security forces,” said Mugu. “For those of us on the ground, it will be a story that will stay on our minds forever,” he added.
Photographers had a different set of challenges.
Normimie, fondly known as Mimie, and a group of other photographers had to risk their lives when they entered Tanjung Labian, the area where the chaos was centred.
“I was asked to sign a form acknowledging that no claims or compensation would be sought by me or my family in the event of injury or death while performing my official duties.”
With her bulletproof vest and helmet provided by the company, she and a few other male photographers managed to bypass the usual checkpoints and found themselves close to a team of security forces, some of whom started pointing their rifles at Mimie and the others.
“I snapped a couple of pictures; we were told that two VAT69 policemen had been killed. I took photos of medics attending to the victims, and that was when one of the VAT69 officers pointed his gun at us, asking us to stop,” she said.
They immediately stopped and put their hands up. Mimie did not realise that almost all the photographers had fled, leaving her with only one other NSTP Sabah photographer there.
“They demanded we delete the photos that we took. They were angry and I could see tears in their eyes. Their comrades had been killed and emotions were running high,” she said.
The two men killed were Insp Zulkifli Mamat and Kpl Sabarudin Daud.
A few days after, Mimie and her fellow photographers decided to try again.
“At this point, the checkpoints and security were extremely tight; we could only get photos from afar,” she said, adding that she had to work together with rival photographers.
“We had to plan properly as a team, although we were from different companies,” Mimie explained.
About a week into the conflict, she and her friends made their way into a village inside an oil palm estate, which at first looked deserted, with clothes still left hanging outside; banners with red words, which she did not understand, hanging there; and just a few chickens around.
“I was snapping away from inside the car,” she said.
Suddenly, Mimie saw a figure behind an oil palm tree, holding a gun and staring at them.
“We were all looking straight in his direction; we didn’t dare move. I asked our driver, ‘Do you see the man?’ and she said, ‘Yes’.”
She immediately shouted to the others not to take out their long cameras, as they could look like guns from outside.
“We could have been shot and killed there,” Mimie said. They retreated carefully before speeding back to the resort where they were staying.
To make things worse, they were scolded by the police for entering prohibited areas and were threatened with arrest.
Now, 13 years later, Mimie says that the assignment was incredibly dangerous and carried risks that she perhaps did not fully comprehend at the time.
Yet, it remains one of the most meaningful experiences of her career.
“People, and even our bosses, think that photographers’ jobs are easy. Just go there, take some pictures and leave,” said the mother of four.
But she loves her job.
“If I am ever given the opportunity to cover a story of that magnitude again, God willing, I would still answer the call. I will be there because some stories are worth telling, no matter how challenging the journey may be,” she said.
