Why now, STAR asks DAP over sea territory issue
KUCHING: State Reform Party ( STAR) Sarawak president Lina Soo has asked DAP why it raised the encroachment of Sarawak’s sea territory five years six months after the Territorial Sea Act 2012 was passed in 2012.
Referring to their press statement reported in The Borneo Post yesterday, she said to the best of her knowledge, no Pakatan MP had objected to the enactment of the Territorial Sea Act which was gazetted on June 22, 2012.
In this respect, she urged threeterm Bandar Kuching MP Chong Chieng Jen to produce the Hansard ( parliamentary records) to verify any objection to the Territorial Sea Act if any, by himself, Lim Kit Siang or any other Pakatan leader.
Soo cited the Territorial Sea Act Section 3 (3) which states that for the purposes of the Continental Shelf Act 1966 [Act 83], Petroleum Mining Act 1966 [Act 95], the National Land Code [Act56/65] and any written law relating to land in force in Sabah and Sarawak, any reference to territorial seas therein shall in relation to any territory be construed as a reference to such part of the sea adjacent to the coast thereof not exceeding three nautical miles measured from the low-water line.
“In effect, this means Sarawak’s territorial sea had been reduced from 12 nautical miles to three nautical miles, and the Economic Exclusive Zone thereafter which extends up to 200 nautical miles belong to the federal government,” she said in a press statement issued yesterday.
The Territorial Sea Act had therefore limited Sarawak’s control of the Continental Shelf to only three nautical miles instead of 200 nautical miles of Exclusive Economic Zone admissible by international law, she added.
“Ownership of our territorial seas and waters means it is within our right to take control of our marine wealth and to exercise the power to grant licences for prospecting, exploration, granting of oil mining leases, and to issue deep sea fishing licences.”
She said that the precise description of the international boundary of Sarawak is defined by The Sarawak (Alteration of Boundaries) Order in Council 1954 which states that the area of the Continental Shelf being the seabed and the subsoil which lies beneath the high seas contiguous to the territorial waters of Sarawak.
“In our Sarawak Land Code [ Cap 81] passed in our Sarawak State Assembly in 1958 it was gazetted that ‘State Land’ includes the foreshore and beds of the sea within the boundaries of Sarawak as provided for by the Sarawak (Alteration of Boundaries) Order in Council 1954.”
She also cited Article 1 (4) of the Federal Constitution which stipulates that subject to Clause (4), the territories of each of the states mentioned in Clause (2) are the territories comprised therein immediately before Malaysia Day.
Soo pointed out that under the Federal Constitution, Article 2 ( b) empowers Parliament to alter the boundaries of any state, but a law altering the boundaries of a state shall not be passed without the consent of that state (expressed by a law made by the Legislature of that state) and of the Conference of Rulers.
As laws passed by Parliament, which affect and alter the ownership of the territory with all its rights therein, can have no constitutional or legal effect without the consent of the Sarawak State Legislative Assembly ( DUN), Soo wanted the Sarawak government to clarify if it had passed a law in DUN to alter the territorial boundary of its Continental Shelf.
“If that legislative step had not been taken, then our Sarawak government must demand that Territorial Sea Act 3 (3) be replaced with: This Act shall not apply to Sarawak and Sabah,” she said.