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Indonesia: Islands in the
storm
By Richel Langit
JAKARTA - Indonesia is scrambling to keep its
territorial integrity after the International Court of
Justice (ICJ) awarded Sipadan and Ligitan islands to
neighboring Malaysia.
There are at least four
more islands that Indonesia might lose if the principle
of continuous administration - employed by the ICJ in
awarding Sipadan and Ligitan to Malaysia after both
claimants failed to present solid legal proof of
ownership over the two islets off the northeastern tip
of Indonesia's East Kalimantan province - is applied.
The four islands still in question are Nipah off
Riau province, which is now controlled by Singapore; an
unnamed small island off West Kalimantan province
occupied by Thai fishermen; Miangas island off Sangir
Talaud in North Sulawesi, currently occupied by
Philippine fishermen; and Ashmore reef, situated south
of Kupang, the provincial capital of Indonesia's East
Nusa Tenggara (NTT). Ashmore reef, which had for
centuries been a staging point for fishermen from Rote
island in NTT, has been occupied by Australia, while
Indonesia makes no attempt to regain control over the
island, where ancestors of Rote people are believed to
have been buried.
With the exception of Ashmore
reef, Nipah, Miangas, and the unnamed small island in
Indonesia's West Kalimantan province are generally
recognized as Indonesia's islands, but the country has
yet to exercise sovereignty over them.
Aside
from these four islands, however, more than 80 small
islands are scattered across Riau, North Sulawesi,
Maluku, West Nusa Tenggara, East Nusa Tenggara, and
Papua provinces. Most of those islands are neglected
though they form part of the country's territorial
boundary. Theoretically, other countries could come and
take over those "neglected" islands and should Indonesia
protest, they could insist on bringing their case to the
international court, where they could be expected to win
in the light of the principle of sovereignty exercise or
continuous administration.
Indonesia, the
world's biggest archipelagic country, stretching almost
5,000 kilometers from the Asian mainland into the
Pacific Ocean, has more than 17,000 islands, only 3,000
of which are inhabited. The rest are not only unoccupied
but also left neglected, and most of them don't even
have a name. Fears are running high that Indonesia could
lose some of these unnamed islands.
So it is not
at all surprising that almost immediately after the
International Court of Justice in The Hague voted
overwhelmingly to hand over Sipadan and Ligitan to
Malaysia on Tuesday, the Indonesian government has come
under intense pressure to demonstrate sovereignty over
disputed islands or uninhabited islands, especially
those situated at the outermost of the country's
territory.
Experts have also urged the
government to set up an inter-department team that will
be in charge of handling maritime boundary issues,
including problems arising from the delimitation of
boundaries.
The government seems to have begun
to realize the importance of maintaining a presence in
remote areas. On Thursday, Home Affairs Minister Hari
Sabarno urged regional administrations to oversee
outlying islands and exercise the country's sovereignty
over them by setting up monuments, assigning security
officials there or moving some Indonesian communities to
neglected islands.
"The government, through the
regional administrations overseeing outlying islands,
must maintain the country's sovereignty through whatever
means necessary to demonstrate this sovereignty.
Otherwise, there will be more Sipadan-Ligitan cases,"
Sabarno warned.
The ICJ ruled that neither
Indonesia nor Malaysia had a title-based claim to the
small islands, but Kuala Lumpur had shown
"manifestations of state authority" over the islands,
notably in the 1930s under British rule, while Indonesia
did not protest Malaysia's actions until 1969.
Still, any attempt by Indonesia to exercise
sovereignty over neglected outlying islands is likely to
be undermined by the current prolonged economic crisis
and ill-equipped armed forces. Indonesia, once
considered one of Asia's economic powerhouses, was
brought to its knees in 1997 when financial crisis
plunged it into deep economic recession. Since then, the
country has been depending on various international
funding institutions, especially the International
Monetary Fund, to finance its development programs. As
such, Indonesia simply does not have funds to finance
any initiative to exercise sovereignty over outlying
islands.
Sabarno suggested that the country
increase military patrols on outlying islands to ensure
that other parties do not attempt to seize them. The
trouble, however, is that the country's armed forces
have been paralyzed by an embargo imposed by the United
States and its allies after waves of bloody rampages
that killed thousands of independence supporters in East
Timor in 1999. More than half of the Indonesian Navy's
warships are not working because they are obsolete or
have no spare parts. So, the Indonesian military, or
TNI, cannot be expected to increase its patrols or set
up posts in outlying islands.
Unending ethnic
and religious conflicts in West Kalimantan, Central
Kalimantan, Maluku, and North Maluku provinces, which
have been plaguing the country since the forced
resignation of dictator Suharto in May 1998, as well as
unresolved secessionist movements in Aceh and Papua
provinces, have also absorbed much of the country's time
and energy. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been
deployed in those conflict-torn areas, wasting hundreds
of millions of dollars, but with still no end in sight.
The loss of Sipadan and Ligitan islands to
Malaysia may set as a precedent for other islands and
provinces to break away from Indonesia. The government
signed on December 9 a peace agreement with the Free
Aceh Movement (GAM), but peace remains elusive in the
country's westernmost province as the secessionist
movement has not dropped its struggle for independence.
In Papua, a low-level insurgence is still operating
despite the government's decision to grant the country's
easternmost province a special autonomy status.
So Indonesia's humiliating defeat in a legal
battle over the ownership of Sipadan and Ligitan goes
beyond the loss of two small islands and national pride.
Prolonged economic crisis, an ill-equipped military, and
unending ethnic and religious conflicts have rendered
Indonesia apparently powerless to defend the its
territorial integrity. As such, Sipadan and Ligitan
might just be the first of many islands Indonesia loses
in territorial disputes with neighboring countries.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
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