KOTA KINABALU, Feb 21 — Doris Jones, the woman wanted by Malaysian police for allegedly masterminding the Sabah and Sarawak secessionist movement is unfazed by the headlines that Interpol will now be roped in to hunt her down.
Jones, in a phone call from an unknown number to Malay Mail Online said that she has not heard anything from Interpol or the Malaysian police about the warrant of arrest for her apart from what she has read in news reports here.
“I’m not sure what they’re talking about. No one had contacted me regarding the arrest. But I know it won’t be easy as they will need to get police cooperation here and they will need to go to court for it,” she said.
She dismissed any threat of imminent arrest, saying she has nothing to be afraid of as she has not committed any crime.
Jones, said to be behind a controversial social media movement called Sabah Sarawak Keluar Malaysia or SSKM, said she is working under a United Kingdom-based non governmental organisation called Sabah Sarawak Union.
SSKM is only its social media name, she explained.
She added that she is currently in Europe, but declined to reveal further details about herself, although she said she travelled to Malaysia as recent as last year and was trailed by the police then.
“I went back as recent as last year, and in 2013, I spent about three months at home, meeting friends, villagers and getting people aware of our campaign and build contacts,” said Jones, who speaks with a heavy English accent.
Sabah state police commissioner Datuk Jalaluddin Abdul Rahman said last week that a warrant of arrest has been issued for a 46-year-old Doris Yapp Kim Youn from Labuan.
Speaking to The Star Online earlier this week, Jones would not confirm if she is the same person named in the arrest warrant.
Yapp, according to reports, is widely believed to be a paralegal based in London who had contested in the May 2014 election for the European Parliament via the United Kingdom-based National Liberal Party on a platform of “self-determination”.
To date a total of 14 local volunteer activists working for Jones’ SSKM movement have been arrested in Tuaran and Lahad Datu for purportedly promoting secession by seeking signatures for a petition to review the 1963 Malaysia Agreement.
Explaining the campaign, Jones said it had first started out as merely an online campaign.
“But we needed to reach places without internet, which is most of Sabah, so our volunteers suggested we take our cause to the public,” she said.
“We do not force, people have to willingly want to put their name down. I can’t see how this is against the law,” Jones added.
She said she has been following the sequence of events in Sabah from where she is currently located.
“I will not abandon them, and continue to provide legal advice,” she said, adding that the sentiment will keep on growing and more and more native Sabahans and Sarawakians were joining the cause.
“The Sabah today is not the same as the Sabah I knew from 40 years ago. Some still pander to the federal government but many more are now willing to stand up and demand their rights as enshrined in the Malaysia Agreement,” she said.
“If they feel they are not heard, what choice are they left with, but to leave?” she added.
The SSKM movement shot to fame last year when a police report was lodged by a non governmental organisation demanding police investigate the act of treason.
The movement’s Facebook page gained more traction and today sees nearly 32,000 “Likes”, mostly from Sabah’s rural youths.
