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Indonesia dismisses Mahathir's 'claim' over Riau Islands
The former Malaysian premier has ruffled his neighbors' feathers with a statement made during a political event that allegedly targeted conservative Malay constitutents.
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Home Minister Tito Karnavian (left) uses a pair of binoculars during a working visit in January 2022 to Karang Singa, a rocky shoal located off the coast of Bintan Island, Riau Islands province. (Kompas.com/-)
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ndonesia has dismissed as “baseless” a statement by former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who told the Malaysian people earlier this week to demand that Singapore and parts of Indonesia “be given back to us”.
Mahathir said that Singapore once belonged to the state of Johor and that Malaysia should have reclaimed it, just as it did when it won its claim against Indonesia over the Sipadan and Ligitan islands off Borneo at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2002. Instead, Malaysia gave up a rocky island “the size of a table” to Singapore at the same court in 2008.
The two-time prime minister was referring to Pedra Branca, which was among the several islets to the east of the Singapore Strait that had been the subject of a territorial dispute between Singapore and Malaysia since 1979. The dispute was largely resolved by the ICJ, which ruled that Pedra Branca belonged to Singapore.
“We should demand not just that Pedra Branca, or Pulau Batu Puteh, be given back to us, we should also demand Singapore as well as [Indonesia’s] Riau Islands, as they are Tanah Melayu [Malay land],” Mahathir said in a speech delivered in Malay and recorded by local media.
The statement elicited a prompt backlash from both Singapore and Indonesia.
Singapore’s speaker of parliament, Tan Chuan-Jin, responded on social media with emojis and a tweet announcing, “here we go again”.
Jakarta issued a particularly firm response, as the 96-year-old former premier had just visited the capital last week to deliver a rousing speech on the two countries’ close neighborly ties at the NasDem Party’s national congress.
