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Indonesia, Vietnam seek middle ground
Indonesia and Vietnam have begun talks on a “provisional arrangement” to prevent any further maritime skirmishes as they try to settle their overlapping claims to economic borders, which have been a source of tension between the Southeast Asian neighbors
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span>Indonesia and Vietnam have begun talks on a “provisional arrangement” to prevent any further maritime skirmishes as they try to settle their overlapping claims to economic borders, which have been a source of tension between the Southeast Asian neighbors.
Technical experts from the two sides met in Jakarta on Tuesday as a prelude to negotiations on a temporary arrangement governing conduct in the waters where Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and Indonesia’s North Natuna Sea overlap, Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi said after a bilateral meeting with her Vietnamese counterpart, Pham Binh Minh, in Bangkok.
The two sides have been engaged in talks for years without much progress with regard to their overlapping claims at the edge of the widely contested South China Sea, one of the world’s busiest maritime trade routes.
They reached an agreement on the delimitation of their continental shelf boundaries in the same general area in 2003 — 30 years after negotiations started.
But even as they wait for the ongoing delimitation talks to produce results, Indonesia and Vietnam agree on the urgent need for an arrangement on standard operating procedures.
“We need it to avoid incidents that have happened before from happening again. Considering the good relationship we have and the frequency of the incidents, we agreed to speed up the completion of the provisional arrangement,” Retno told reporters on Tuesday evening.
According to a statement carried by the Vietnamese government-run VGP News portal, the ministers agreed during their meeting that “the two countries will foster their strategic partnership across fields, including cooperation in sea-related issues”.
Over the years, scuffles with Vietnamese fishermen, the coast guard and other maritime authorities have frequently occurred, straining efforts by the neighbors to conclude their border talks.
In April, an Indonesian Navy warship was locked in a stand-off with a vessel from Vietnam’s Fisheries Resources Surveillance (VFRS) Agency, which had tried to forcibly prevent another vessel suspected of fishing illegally in Indonesian waters from being impounded.
A video circulating on social media purported to show the Vietnamese boat ramming the hull of the Indonesian warship as the armed navy crew shout expletives. In May, Vietnam demanded the release of the fishermen involved, saying they were illegally detained by Indonesia.
Last month, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo met Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit, where they committed to speeding up the delimitation talks.
Retno said the measures could be based on a similar arrangement Indonesia has with Malaysia. “So we already have a reference point that may [or may not] become the basis for our provisional arrangement with Vietnam,” she said.
In 2012, Indonesia and Malaysia signed a deal to implement common guidelines for maritime enforcement agencies in the treatment of fisherfolk operating in disputed waters, which both sides claim has led to a decrease in the number of arrests of fishermen from either country.
According to the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (APMM), 71 Indonesian fishermen were caught trespassing Malaysian waters in 2015, down from the prior year’s figure of 232.
The agreement came out of a quarrel that saw Malaysia capture Indonesian fishermen trespassing into its waters, while the Indonesian side arrested Malaysians using trawlers — fishing equipment that is banned in Indonesia.
But the figures associated with illegal fishing by Malaysians pale in comparison to figures from Vietnam. Last year alone, Indonesia seized 29 vessels from Vietnam believed to have been used for illegal fishing, compared to just 7 vessels from Malaysia, according to data from the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry.
Around 55 percent of the 539 foreign-flagged vessels Indonesia impounded and sank between 2014 and 2019 originated from Vietnam, the ministry recently revealed.
Nguyen Than Trung, an international relations expert at Vietnam’s University of Social Sciences and Humanities, urged countries like Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia to form a “regional fisheries management regime” by “mapping out common fishing grounds where regional fishers can compete on equal footing for fish caught under agreed-upon rules”.
“The absence of such a regime has only served to push fishers from these three countries into more confrontations with each other’s patrol ships as well as China’s in a race for depleted fish stocks,” he recently wrote for the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative. (tjs)
