ASIATODAY.ID, JAKARTA – In a joint statement issued after the meeting between President Prabowo Subianto and President Xi Jinping in Beijing, China was assessed as not endangering Indonesia’s sovereignty over Indonesia’s territorial sea in the northern waters of Natuna Island which borders the South China Sea.
On the contrary, the joint statement actually strengthens Indonesia’s sovereignty over Indonesia’s territorial sea.
This is what international relations observer DR. Teguh Santosa in a written statement, Wednesday, November 13 2024.
Teguh said that Indonesia’s territorial sea boundaries in these waters had been agreed between Indonesia and two neighboring countries, Vietnam and Malaysia, and had been depicted on the new map of Indonesia released in 2017 with a solid blue line.
“The settlement of Indonesia’s territorial sea boundaries with Vietnam and Malaysia is the culmination of the Indonesian maritime struggle which began in the era of Prime Minister Djuanda Kartawidjaja (Djuanda Declaration 1957) and was adopted internationally in the UN Convention on the Law of Sea (UNCLOS) 1982,” said the lecturer. international relations at the Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University (UIN), Jakarta.
The former Deputy Chancellor of Bung Karno University (UBK) added that outside the territorial sea boundaries, Indonesia and two neighboring countries, Vietnam and Malaysia, still have different views regarding the boundaries of each country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). In the new 2017 map of Indonesia, this boundary is depicted with a pink dotted line.
For a long time, continued Teguh, who is also a member of the PP Muhammadiyah Institute for International Relations and Cooperation (LHKI), the waters of the South China Sea have been a complicated and complex problem among ASEAN countries that have islands in these waters.
“In 2009, China also claimed these waters as its own. China’s claim to use nine dashed-lines (9DL) is outside Indonesia’s territorial sea. “However, 9DL intersects with the territorial seas of the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam and Vietnam, as well as parts of Indonesia’s EEZ,” said the Deputy Secretary General of the Sharia Economic Community (MES).
The former Head of Foreign Affairs of PP Pemuda Muhammadiyah gave an example of the Philippines’ attitude in the dispute in the South China Sea. The Philippines, which objected to China’s invasion of its territorial sea, filed a lawsuit with the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in the Netherlands in 2013. In 2016, the PCA won the Philippines’ lawsuit. However, China did not recognize the case filed, so it itself did not recognize the PCA decision.
“Thus, it can be understood that the term “areas of overlapping claims” used in point 9 of the joint statement between Indonesia and China refers to waters outside Indonesia’s territorial sea which are in fact claimed by various countries in the region,” said the General Chair of the Media Network. Cyber Indonesia (JMSI).
According to the former Vice President of the Confederation of ASEAN Journalists (CAJ), the 9th point of the joint statement between Indonesia and China actually offers a new approach that can be used to resolve disputes and start a round of regional cooperation in waters, without ignoring or even negating the 1982 UNCLOS and the Declaration on the Conduct (DOC) of Parties in the South China Sea.
Settlement using this model, he continued, has been applied in a number of complicated water disputes, such as in the Caspian Sea between Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan, in 2018.
On the other hand, Teguh, who was once the Head of Foreign Affairs of the Indonesian Journalists Association (PWI), also said that the joint statement between Indonesia and China was a manifestation of the good neighbor policy introduced by Prabowo Subianto’s government.
“As a good neighbor, Indonesia feels obliged to offer solutions to resolve conflicts and turn tensions into mutually beneficial cooperation,” said Teguh Santosa. (AT Network)
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