TheJakartaPost
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Jakarta asserts sovereign rights on Natuna
The government is planning to bolster its defenses in the waters around the Natunas, where Chinese coast guard vessels have since last month been repeatedly spotted encroaching on Indonesian-controlled waters and Chinese fishing boats found illegally fishing.
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China Coast Guard ship 3303 passes near the Imam Bonjol warship 383 as the Indonesian Navy pursues the Han Tan Cou fishing vessel entering Indonesia's Natuna waters on June 17. The Navy caught the China-flagged boat suspected of illegal fishing in Indonesian waters. (Antara/Photo Courtesy of The Navy's Western Region Fleet Command (Koarmabar))
P
resident Joko “Jokowi” Widodo told China on Monday that Indonesia’s territorial integrity was “nonnegotiable”, as the government prepared to deploy a multitude of military and naval assets to the Natuna island chain in Riau Islands province, where a maritime spat with Chinese vessels is slowly turning into a show of strength against a foreign power.
The government is planning to bolster its defenses in the waters around the Natunas, where Chinese coast guard vessels have since last month been repeatedly spotted encroaching on Indonesian-controlled waters and Chinese fishing boats found illegally fishing.
Over the past week, Jakarta and Beijing have been embroiled in a diplomatic tug-of-war over the latter’s claim in Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the North Natuna Sea, which borders Vietnam and Malaysia and is located adjacent to the disputed South China Sea.
The government responded with a series of firm actions, from summoning the Chinese envoy in Jakarta and lodging an official protest with Beijing, to making a show of rejecting China’s illegal claims to the waters and planning to increase its presence in the waters off the Natunas.
China’s claims over the South China Sea, which has put it at odds with the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan, were invalidated in a 2016 international arbitration ruling. Jakarta has used the ruling as a legal precedent for refuting similar claims based on tradition or history.
Jokowi said after a Cabinet meeting the Indonesian position was that there was no bargaining when it came to sovereign rights.
“I think all the existing statements have been very clear that there will be no negotiating our country’s sovereignty, that our territory is nonnegotiable,” he said.
