Widodo sails to S. China Sea on warship
JAKARTA—President Joko Widodo visited remote Indonesian islands on a warship on Thursday in an apparent show of force after clashes with Chinese vessels and as fears grow Beijing is seeking to stake a claim in the area.
Widodo led a high-level dele- gation, including the foreign minister and Armed Forces chief, to Indonesia’s Natuna Islands in the southern reaches of the South China Sea, arriving at a naval base before being escorted to the warship as fighter jets buzzed overhead and navy vessels performed maneuvers off the coast.
It was a bold move to assert sovereignty over the area after Beijing stated its “overlapping claim” on nearby waters.
Indonesian officials described Widodo’s visit to Natuna Islands as the strongest message that has been given to Chi- na over the issue.
A presidential palace statement said Widodo held a Cabinet meeting aboard the warship.
The president ordered defenses around teh Natunas to be stepped up during the meeting.
“I asked the military and the maritime security agency to better guard the seas,” the palace quoted Widodo as saying.
The government released pictures showing Widodo standing next to a gun turret on the warship’s deck, flanked by the military chief and ministers.
“In the course of our history, we’ve never been this stern [with China]. This is also to demonstrate that the president is not taking the issue lightly,” Chief Security Minister Luhut Pandjaitan told The Jakarta Post newspaper.
Beijing on Monday said that while China did not dispute Indonesia’s sovereignty over the Natuna Islands, “some waters of the South China Sea” were subject to “overlapping claims on maritime rights and interests.”
The statement raised concerns that Beijing is toughening its stance by openly acknowledging a dispute with Jakarta.
Indonesian waters
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi on Wednesday rejected China’s stance, saying the waters around Natuna are in Indonesian territory.
The Indonesian Navy, however, has raised fears that Chinese poaching in Natuna waters was a “ruse” to stake its claims.
A senior US state department official echoed the warning on Wednesday, saying China was using its fishing fleets with armed escorts to bolster its maritime claims.
The official’s comment came after Indonesian warships fired warning shots and detained a Chinese-flagged fishing boat and seven crew near the Natuna Islands last week.
“I think it’s a disturbing trend to see Chinese fishing vessels accompanied by coast guard ves- sels, used in a way that appears to be an attempt to [assert] a claim that may not be legitimate,” the official said via conference call to journalists in Southeast Asia.
Provocative, destabilizing
“I do think that it does point to an expanding presence of Chinese sort of military and paramilitary forces and used in a way that is provocative and potentially destabilizing,” the official said.
Unlike several other countries in the region, Indonesia has no overlapping claims with China to islets or reefs in the South China Sea, but Beijing’s claim to fishing rights near the Natunas appears to overlap with Jakarta’s exclusive economic zone.
Last week’s incident was only the latest in a series of skirmishes between the two countries since Jakarta launched a crackdown on illegal fishing in 2014.
In March, a Chinese Coast Guard vessel entered Indonesian waters near the Natunas and helped an apprehended Chinese fishing boat escape as the Indonesians were towing it to shore.
And last month, the Indonesian Navy opened fire on a Chi- nese trawler near the islands and seized the vessel.
Development
Widodo’s visit to the remote island chain, which lies over 340 kilometers off the northwest tip of Kalimantan—Indonesia’s portion of Borneo island—was also aimed at promoting infrastructure development in Indonesia’s border areas.
“We want to show that Indonesia is a big country and we have to show this physically,” Widodo said in a statement, referring to those infrastructure ambitions.