[woofa.express]

Part 2.
The Pirate raid on Lahad Datu.

Lahad Datu,or La Datu for short is a grubby town in the south east of the East Malaysian state of Sabah. Population 200K. A commercial centre for the surrounding industries of palm oil and timber. Palm plantations stretch for miles and miles and what timber, good quality hard wood, remains is quickly being plundered for local use and export. This sensible greenie say plundered because there is little or none left for wild life. Monkeys don’t live in palms and elephants pull the small trees from the ground in protest. Electric fences were erected as a barrier to these big fellows. The plantations are owned mainly by the government.
The town has one good supermarket, one good hotel and one good western bank, the Standard Charter. There are no rubbish bins and rubbish is simply dropped when it is to be disposed. The fish market and meat market are on the shore and all waste is thrown onto the mud flats and is disposed by the tide. It's on the nose. The wet climate makes fungus on the buildings. Many people are homeless and simply sit around the streets. One needs to be tolerant to grubby streets and smelly odours. There is no point in elaborating on the filth. I am told the stilt houses in the harbour have been demolished leaving no place for the inhabitants to live. Many new housing apartments have been built but only for Malaysians and not their guest workers who were from other Muslim states, Indonesia, Pakistan and Mindanao in the southern Philippines.
I am going on a bit considering this story was to be of pirates arriving in La Datu. Let me continue.
This happened in ’85 and I started work there in ’95. It is a story that is still a talking point. Well the Philippine pirates arrived in town. The military base emptied and the soldiers fled westward. The police left in the same hurried manner. The pirates went to the bank mentioned above, but not to make a deposit. There are still bullet holes in the wall and now cashiers serve behind thick bullet proof glass. They made two other significant calls. One to the military barracks where they acquired a large inventory of weapons, there was no resistance there. And to the police station where they released all the prisoners and immediately had many more pirate recruits plus more weapons. No doubt they took provisions and other items they thought to be handy. Many injured, 20 dead.
Now here’s where they were smart. They called the police and informed them a boat was left to the east near Sahabat. Two days later the navy arrived along with the media and in coordinated timing filmed as the military shot the boat out of the water, all recorded to be shown on national news on how the military dealt with baddies.
The shots are the resort at Sahabat and myself rolling, -spreading fertilizer somewhere in Malaysia.