The Boundary Edition (Indonesia-Malaysia) IV: "The Ambiguity Residences"

06:06 Baso Hamdani 0 Comments

         Sebatik island located in North Kalimantan. Partly within Indonesia and partly within Malaysia. Sebatik Island of Indonesia had population 35.777 with population density up to 306,59 (BPS Nunukan, 2013). Even though, government both of the countries had issued the legal border understanding, but delimitation and demarcation still have problems. The problem termed as Outstanding Boundary Problem (OBP) that was happened in Sebatik Island. 

       The question is why that happened? If we want to know, we have to back from the History. In 16 Century, Netherlands people was settled in Tawau. At the time, Britain in Sabah fighted off Netherlands. Then, Netherlands moved to Pembilangan (Nunukan). European people had fundamental role, if they got land of dependency they did not have to be fighting each other. So that, Sebatik islands was divided into two area. 

      The boundary line has been defined by the boundary conventions between the Netherlands and United Kingdom (Britain) in 1891, 1915 and 1928. In these conventions the boundary line is defined by combination of watershed, latitude, river, and straight line. Demarcation survey of land boundary between Indonesia and Malaysia has been started by the Netherlands and Britain, although only related to small boundary portion. Indonesia and Malaysia continue the survey since early 1970s (www.lppm.itb.ac.id).

      Although several boundary monuments have been established and coordinated in Joint Survey between Great Britain and Netherland (1912) and Joint Survey between Indonesia and Malaysia (1982-1983) but the lines still disputable (www.lppm.itb.ac.id).