As tensions between Indonesia and Malaysia build, the speaker of the House of Representatives and a minister called for calm as officials from both countries will meet in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, to speed up the settlement of pending issues.
House Speaker Marzuki Alie said demonstrations in front of the Malaysian Embassy in Jakarta, which saw demonstrators throw human feces at the embassy, were intolerable.
“Demonstrations should not go beyond accepted limits,” he said.
Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Djoko Su-yanto warned people to address the dispute calmly.
“It is true that we still have issues with our borders, but it doesn’t mean that we need to tackle these issues in a hot-headed fashion. Escalations, be they wars or breaking off diplomatic ties, would not help us solve the problems,” he said.
The meeting in Sabah will take place on Sept. 6 in a joint commission forum that would highlight the border issues. The meeting is not a border negotiation meeting, but serves as an opportunity to take stock of bilateral relations between the two countries.
The Foreign Ministry said it would list possible ways to manage the situation in disputed waters to avoid a recurrence of a recent incident, in which three Indonesian officers from the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry were arrested by Malaysian authorities in the waters off Riau Islands province.
Arif Havas Oegroseno, director general for international treaties and law at the Foreign Ministry, said one of the options was to adopt the coordinated patrol model between Indonesia and Malaysia in the Malacca Strait.
He said a coordinated patrol would be different from a joint patrol as the latter meant both countries working in one patrol vessel with one command from one country only.
Havas corrected news reports published by The Jakarta Post on Friday, saying that Jakarta was mulling a “joint patrol” in the disputed waters.
“We have coordinated patrols between Indonesian and Malaysian navy and sea control units in the Malacca Strait under the command of the General Border Committee,” Havas said.
“We have to look further into the applicable arrangement [in the disputed waters] with Malaysia,” he said.
Jakarta and Malaysia have pending maritime border settlements covering the Malacca Strait, Singapore Strait, South China Sea and Sulawesi Sea.
Marty said the meeting in Kinabalu would emphasize the settlement of border disputes, following heightened tension with the neighboring country.
The Malaysian Embassy in Jakarta said its government had not issued travel advisories to Malaysian citizens traveling to Indonesia, but would to do so if the situation worsened into raids of its nationals.
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