MANILA, 12 January 2006 — Two masked gunmen killed the Muslim sultan of Maguindanao and wounded his brother in an ambush in the southern Philippines, police said yesterday, warning of a potential clan war in the area.
Local police chief Inspector Rick Masla said Datu Amir Baraguir and his brother, Andy, were walking home on Wednesday evening in Sultan Kudarat town when two men on a motorcycle shot them with pistols.
“The sultan did not reach the hospital alive,” said Masla. “We’re still trying to investigate the motive for the shooting. We’re hoping the sultan’s death would not stir up a clan war.”
Baraguir, 45, ascended a year ago to the Sultanate of Maguindanao, one of several Muslim royal houses in the troubled south.
Police said Baraguir was known as a moderate Islamic leader and an advocate of self-determination for Muslims in the south of the mainly Roman Catholic country, supporting proposals to revise the constitution and move to a parliamentary system.
Before he was enthroned as the 25th sultan, Baraguir wrote a newspaper column and hosted a community radio program promoting peaceful coexistence among Christian, Muslim and mountain tribes on the island of Mindanao.
His columns and radio commentaries attacked extremist Muslim groups, earning the ire of separatist Islamist guerrillas seeking an independent state.
From the 14th to the 17th century, the sultanate exerted authority over the islands of Mindanao and Basilan and the old kingdom of Ternate in what is now Indonesia.
A more famous sultanate on Jolo island in the southwestern Philippines has pending claims to the eastern Malaysian state of Sabah on the northern tip of Borneo island.
Western colonization weakened the sultanates, although the families retained a strong cultural influence in Muslim communities.
Unlike the sultans 300 years ago, present-day royals have no political power and are merely symbols of Muslim culture and traditional beliefs.
Eid Kabalu, a spokesman of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the largest of four Muslim guerrilla groups in the south, said the rebels had nothing to do with Baraguir’s death, suggesting a brewing clan war among royal families claiming the throne.
“We’ve been hearing about family feuds among the sultan’s heirs,” he said.
— With a report from Al Jacinto
