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Thirteen Vietnamese patrol boats reportedly detected in disputed waters
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Indonesian Navy personnel take into custody a fishing vessel with Vietnamese crew members on board during a security operation in the Natuna Sea in January 2019. War vessel KRI Cut Nyak Dien-375, belonging to the first Fleet Command, apprehended the KG 1916 TS fishing boat and its 15 crew members for allegedly fishing illegally in Indonesian territory. (Courtesy of 1st Fleet Command/-)
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ndonesia claims to have detected at least 13 Vietnamese patrol boats holding station on the official "continental shelf" boundary between Indonesia and Vietnam in the Natuna Sea this year, with the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry alleging they were there to assist Vietnamese vessels to fish illegally in disputed waters nearby.
Mas Achmad Santosa, the head of Satgas 115, the ministry’s illegal fishing task force, said officials concluded the vessels were Vietnamese patrol boats after analyzing data sourced from the Automatic Identification System (AIS) -- an automatic tracking system that monitors transponders on ships and is used by vessel traffic services -- and the ministry's Vessel Monitoring System (VMS), as well as its COSMO-Skymed Radar Imagery.
“Our analysis shows that these are patrol vessels of the Vietnamese government and they are positioned on the continental shelf boundary. There are two possible reasons behind this: It is a form of intimidation or these ships are ready to guard Vietnamese fishing vessels that operate in the [overlapping] waters [of the mutually claimed exclusive economic zones (EEZ)],” he said during a press briefing on Monday evening.
He said by sending patrol boats to that location Vietnam has violated the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which mandates provisional arrangements if conflicting claims for EEZs have not yet been settled and bans moves that could harm negotiations.
On the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in Bangkok in late June, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc agreed to accelerate the ongoing negotiations over the delimitation of their EEZs, while at the same time to start fresh talks to establish provisional guidelines to prevent fishing-related conflicts.
An EEZ is not a territorial sea where a country can wield full sovereignty, but rather an area where it has certain sovereign rights over the natural resources, including fish, that exist in the water columns.
The delimitation of the Indonesian EEZ's boundary with Vietnam's is one of five active border negotiations Jakarta is currently engaged in. The talks have been going on for years without much progress.
