Special Report: RP-Indonesia island row brews

( First of two parts )

The Philippines is expected to figure in another territorial dispute under another Macapagal as president.

Four decades after her late father, President Diosdado Macapagal, reasserted Philippine sovereignty over Sabah, President Arroyo is expected to lock diplomatic horns soon with long-time ally Indonesia over the small island of Palmas in the Sulawesi Sea.

Palmas Island, which the Indonesians call Pulau Miangas, is only 3.2 kilometers long and 1.2 kilometers wide. But diplomats and international law experts said title to this little spot in the map would affect some 15,000 square kilometers of "important territorial seas."

The brewing territorial dispute is believed to be the real reason why Indonesian warships on Jan. 27 sank four Philippine fishing vessels while their 49 crewmen were arrested and detained in an Indonesian naval station in Manado for "illegally fishing in Indonesian waters."

The incident prompted Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas Ople to summon Indonesian chargé d’affaires Alexander Laturiuw on Friday and verbally protest the incident.

"Our fishermen do not present any danger to Indonesia, nor were they involved in smuggling or trafficking," Ople told reporters at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA). "We have been able to deal with similar situations in the past without the use of deadly force."

Meanwhile, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar warned other Southeast Asian nations that the ongoing hostility among Thais and Cambodians should serve as a lesson for all to tread warily on national and religious sensitivities.

"If we forget this, we may touch on something that could cause untoward incidents to erupt," the official Bernama news agency quoted Syed Hamid as saying.

At the DFA, sources said the Foreign Office demanded that Jakarta immediately repatriate the 49 detained fishermen and pay for the scuttled vessels.

"Mr. Laturiuw assured me that the Indonesian government will do all it can to return our fishermen. I emphasized the importance of their immediate return. We can discuss the issue of reparation for the boats at a later time," Ople said.

On the day that Ople summoned Laturiuw, the Jakarta Post reported that high-level talks have been scheduled between Indonesia and the Philippines in March to settle maritime borders.

Indonesian media also played up the significance of the "RP-Indonesian Joint Commission on Bilateral Cooperation" meeting that was held in Manila in December where Indonesian Foreign Minister Hasan Wirayuda supposedly had closed-door talks with Ople aimed at removing overlapping claims over maritime borders.

Indonesian officials have also denied before Indonesian media that any island is in dispute but Filipino international law expert Professor H. Harry Roque thinks otherwise.

Gunboat diplomacy?

" A lot is at stake here for both countries," Roque told The STAR. Roque is a recognized expert in on the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of Sea (UNCLOS).

The UNCLOS is the fundamental international law on maritime matters, including maritime borders among nations, the freedoms of the high seas, shipping, fishing, exploitation of the resources of the seabed, and principles for the protection of the marine environment.

Roque, who teaches international law at the University of the Philippines, said the sinking of the four fishing boats is a "strong signal" that Jakarta will seriously assert its sovereignty over small islands, like Palmas Island, under the UNCLOS.

Roque said Jakarta had to "flex its naval muscle" mainly because of the implications of the settlement the International Court of Justice (ICJ) promulgated over the ownership of the Sipadan and Ligitan islands off Sabah.

Indonesia disputed ownership of the islands with Malaysia but the ICJ in December ruled in favor of Malaysia based on the principle of "continuous administration."

Voting 16 to 1, the ICJ in the Hague, Netherlands ruled in favor of Kuala Lumpur because it proved it had administrative control over Sipadan and Ligitan long before Indonesia did.

"Curiously, even Indonesian authorities acknowledge this fact," said Roque, who wrote an article on the Palmas Island controversy that will appear in the forthcoming issue of the Philippine Law Journal.

Roque said Jakarta fears that it may lose more islands, many of them unnamed, if the principle of continuous administration is applied to other islands.

Thus, the administration of Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri has adopted the policy of asserting its control over its border islands.

An island in the pages of history

One of these islands, Roque explained, happens to be Palmas, which is is only 47 nautical miles east-northeast of Saranggani Island, which itself lies off Mindanao.

Palmas lies within the boundaries of the Philippines as defined by the 1898 Treaty of Paris, which ceded the country from Spain to the United States on Dec. 10, 1898 for $20 million.

But the Netherlands, the colonial power which lorded over what is now Indonesia, also claimed the island.

The US and the Netherlands submitted the matter to arbitration, choosing the noted Swiss jurist, Max Huber, as arbitrator acting in behalf of the Permanent Court of Arbitration.

The two colonial powers asked Huber to determine "whether the Island of Palmas (or Miangas) in its entirety forms a part of territory belonging to the United States of America or of Netherlands territory."

In what would later become a landmark case in international law, Huber ruled in 1928 in favor of the Netherlands because while Spain discovered the island in the 16th century, it never occupied the island — an important act of sovereignty required by the then prevalent international law.

In contrast, Huber said the Netherlands had a stronger claim over the island because it had long standing although intermittent relations with the island’s native chieftains since the 17th century up to the time the Treaty of Paris was signed between Spain and the US.

Jakarta’s legal tack

To avoid losing more islands because of the principle of "continuous administration," Indonesia is intent on asserting its "control" of islands like Palmas.

On Jan. 4, the Jakarta Post reported that Indonesia outlined a five-point program that aims to intensify the development of key islands to "impress its sovereignty upon neighboring countries."

The Jakarta Post, quoting Alex S.W. Retraubun of Indonesia’s Ministry of Maritime and Fishery Affairs, said Indonesia uses 83 key islands as points of reference in defining its marine territory, continental coastlines and exclusive economic zones.

Retraubun made special mention of Palmas Island, whose people "are interacting more with the neighboring Filipinos."

"Our neighbors will continue to set their eyes on our small islands because we ourselves haven’t seriously exploited them as new economic resources," the Jakarta Post quoted Retraubun as saying. (To be continued)