The year 2009 has seen Jakarta successfully clinch a deal with Singapore regarding maritime borders, establish closer relations with Washington, and negotiate an agreement with Kuala Lumpur over migrant workers.
But at the same time it also encountered the serious problem of boat people from Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Afghanistan and Iraq, who have made Indonesia a transit point on their journey to Australia.
After four years of negotiations, Indonesia and Singapore signed in March a maritime boundary agreement, in a deal that saw Singapore renounce its reclaimed shoreline as the basis for determining the border. The deal ended bilateral tensions that had worsened over fears that Singapore’s reclamation, which had already drawn protests from environmentalists, might threaten Indonesia’s border.
At the center of the controversy was the dredging of an estimated 300 million cubic meters of sand from the seabed around Nipah Island, and exported to Singapore, that risked the outlying Indonesian territory sinking below sea level during high tides, in a disappearance that would have redrawn Indonesia’s maritime border.
The resolution of the nagging border issue is one of the successes that may elevate the political clout of Indonesia, which shares borders with 10 countries in the region. Jakarta is still engaged in negotiations with Malaysia over the maritime area of Ambalat off eastern Borneo. The diplomatic saga with Malaysia almost resulted in skirmishes earlier this year, and could prove detrimental for Jakarta in winning public support after a range of issues — from the loss of Sipadan and Ligitan islands to misplaced cultural heritage claims and migrant worker abuse — soured its already testy relations with Kuala Lumpur.
Indonesia suspended the sending of migrant workers to Malaysia as of June this year after a string of abuse cases, saying it would only be resumed if Malaysia agreed to adopt several measures Jakarta had proposed. Kuala Lumpur has agreed to allow migrant workers to keep their own passports and have one day off a week, but Jakarta says it will only lift the moratorium once a deal has been reached on minimum wages and costs to send the workers over.
Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa has hinted the agreement is only a partial solution to a wider problem that starts domestically with poor government control over the eligibility and competence of migrant workers to go abroad. He cited human trafficking as a threat that would continue to jeopardize migrant workers. Without an integrated effort between the relevant agencies at home, the Foreign
Ministry will be left high and dry abroad in dealing with the migrant workers’ plight.
The ministry, under new head Marty, has made the improvement of migrant workers’ conditions one of its 100-day programs. It began by bringing home hundreds of illegal and troubled migrant workers from the Middle East, Singapore and Hong Kong. Also included in the 100-day programs is the strengthening of the ASEAN human rights body.
The world’s third-largest democracy has paved the way for democracy and human rights to make inroads in Southeast Asia through the regional organization ASEAN, which has only recently established its own rights commission, and which critics say lacks a real protection mandate.
Although admitting the rights commission has been watered down into a campaigning body to compromise with other ASEAN members with little rights and democracy enforcement, Jakarta has vowed to infuse more power into the commission in five years’ time, when its periodic review rolls around. And bucking the slide in the rights body, Jakarta is the only country that has appointed a rights activist as its representative to the ASEAN Inter-governmental Commission of Human Rights.
Jakarta’s democracy, rights and moderate Islamic credentials have helped ease relations with the United States, marked by the visit of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Jakarta in February and the implementation of a comprehensive bilateral partnership. Indonesia has been touted as an example of Islam and democracy coexisting successfully.
The United States has also drawn closer to ASEAN by acceding to its Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, and launched the first ASEAN-US Summit in Singapore this year. Marty met with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the sidelines of the summit.
At a time when Indonesia is enjoying a thaw in relations with the lone remaining superpower, its relations with Australia are on rocky ground over the issues of boat people and the Balibo Five.
Indonesia has come under media scrutiny over its recent decision to hold 78 Sri Lankan boat people who were picked up by an Australian vessel in international waters on their way to Australia. The Foreign Ministry denied rumors of an unannounced payment from Canberra to Jakarta for the decision. Jakarta said it took into account the risk of the country becoming a dumping ground for unwanted immigrants, stressing the latest move to detain the Sri Lankans here was purely for humanitarian reasons, as they had been picked up within Indonesia’s search and rescue zone.
The decision by Australia to reinvestigate the deaths of five Australia-based journalists in 1975 in then East Timor has also sparked new tensions with Indonesia at a time when Jakarta said its relations with Canberra were at a high. The case of the Balibo Five was considered closed by Jakarta, which said the ill-fated journalists were killed in crossfire prior to the Indonesian military’s invasion of East Timor.
Rifts in relations with close neighbors such as Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and Timor Leste are inevitable, given the high degree of mutual interaction, but Jakarta has also tried to maintain high-level contact with these countries through some of its own initiatives, such as the Bali Democracy Forum, where leaders can hash out the issues of the day.
Source : The Jakarta Post
