Sungai Ringgit, a rustic Malaysian fishing village, is a far-flung outpost of the Asian continent. It lies on the tip of the Malay Peninsula.
Just before dawn, local fisherman Yep Keon Boon, 48, invites me aboard his vessel, and we head out to sea. As the 10-meter-long boat gathers speed, it begins to smack against the waves, with the shock of each impact reverberating through the hull.
The pale pink dawn begins to brighten the cloudy horizon. Container ships and tankers become visible, moving as if in formation. Compared to the size of this boat, they look like massive floating fortresses.
This is the Singapore Straits, one of the world’s busiest sea lanes. More than 80 percent of Japan’s crude-oil imports pass through this maritime thoroughfare.
I strain to discern the Horsburgh Lighthouse. Next to its white and navy-blue-striped tower a helipad and a steel tower.
The islet is located at 1 degree 19 minutes north latitude and 104 degrees 24 minutes east longitude. Even at low tide, its surface area is only 8,560 square meters, roughly the size of a schoolyard. This humble outcrop, known as Pedra Branca, became the center of a sovereignty dispute between Malaysia and Singapore and was eventually referred to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for resolution.
The dispute erupted in 1980. The year before, Malaysia had printed an official map that placed the island within its territorial waters, a move that drew a protest from Singapore.
Government officials from that time recall why the island’s position was suddenly a point of contention.
“It was something that was never viewed legalistically,” said former Malaysian foreign minister Syed Hamid Albar, 69, who headed his country’s lawsuit at the ICJ.
Singapore had administered the Horsburgh Lighthouse since gaining independence from Malaysia in 1965. However, Kuala Lumpur was of the view that the islet itself belonged to Malaysia.
There had, in fact, been a prelude to the quarrel. In 1978, Malaysian surveyors had attempted to land on the island, but were intercepted by the lighthouse keeper and forced to leave. And in May that year, the Singaporean Foreign Ministry had sent an urgent telegram to Shanmugam Jayakumar, 73, a legal scholar turned diplomat, who at the time was participating in the U.N. Conference on the Law of the Sea in Geneva, Switzerland. The telegram read: “Fly to London.”
ARCHIVES HUNT
Jayakumar’s task was to collect and copy British historical records pertaining to the island’s status, which the former colonial ruler of both Singapore and Malaysia would have documented. When Jayakumar arrived at the British national archives, he was told by a staff member that another person had been researching the subject only a few days earlier. Malaysia was on the move, too.
Sensing the urgency of the situation, Jayakumar sent copies of as many documents as he could find back to Singapore. He later took central roles in government and served as foreign minister and deputy prime minister, and continued to formulate strategy for the nation’s claim to Pedra Branca.
Singapore was by then growing as a trading nation. Pedra Branca is situated at the gateway of the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea and is known as a locale that carries threats to shipping from strong winds and currents. Singapore took the view that retaining responsibility for the Horsburgh Lighthouse and for the safety of vessels coming and going from Singapore Harbor was in its national interests.
By the late 1980s, Malaysian government vessels were increasingly approaching the island. In the summer of 1989, an armed Malaysian ship raised tensions when it dropped anchor nearby.
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew sought to resolve the crisis through negotiations with his Malaysian counterpart, Mahathir Mohamad, and proposed that the two neighbors submit the matter to the ICJ if talks should fail. In the late 1990s, the two nations spent four years putting together a Special Agreement that defined the terms of their respective cases in detail, and in 2003, they jointly notified the ICJ.
Malaysia argued that Pedra Branca had originally come under the sovereignty of the Johor Sultanate, a kingdom that once ruled the Malay Peninsula’s southern regions, and that Britain had merely been granted permission to maintain a lighthouse on the rocks. It argued that Singapore had only inherited the status of lighthouse keeper from Britain, and had never held sovereignty over the islet itself.
However, in the ICJ’s judgement of May 23, 2008, a document presented by Singapore shattered Malaysia’s claim.
LOCAL FISHERMEN CHOOSE NOT TO MAKE WAVES
One document swung the judgment: a letter sent in September 1953 from the Acting State Secretary of Johor to the British colonial government, stating that they did not claim ownership of Pedra Branca. Singapore had submitted it to the court.
“The most important aspect is thorough preparation,” recalls Jayakumar. “Digging up all the material, all the facts, and looking at all legal angles.”
Malaysia asserted that ownership and sovereignty are different concepts, an argument the ICJ rejected. Because Malaysia had not protested over repeated earlier incursions by Singapore–including investigations of maritime disasters and flag-raisings prior to and following 1953–the ICJ judged that by 1980, when the dispute arose, sovereignty had already passed to Singapore.
The judgement was a grim one for Malaysia, despite the court’s recognition of its claim to the Middle Rocks, uninhabited rocks. Nevertheless, Albar, the former foreign minister, says it was important that his nation respected the ICJ’s decision.
He believes that adopting a law-based solution benefitted Malaysia’s efforts to achieve regional integration through participation in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).
“By maintaining peace within our region without resorting to the use of force, we can deal with larger nations on an equal basis as a member of ASEAN and prevent interventions of the kind we once saw in Indochina,” he said.
At the time of the dispute, Singapore was in effective control of Pedra Branca. It could, therefore, have taken the view that there was little point in involving the ICJ because of the risk of losing.
However, Jayakumar insists this was not an option: “We are a small country, so it is important for us to fight for our rights through peaceful means in order to gain a strong standing in the international community. If a bigger country refuses to do so, then that gives us the moral high ground.”
The ICJ’s judgement has not entirely settled the dispute. The two nations later agreed to allow fishing 0.5 nautical miles (0.9 kilometers) off the islet and the rocks, but territorial waters have yet to be defined, so a joint committee has been formed and negotiations are ongoing.
And some Malaysians feel discomfort with the outcome. On a beach in Sungai Ringgit, I came across 15 fishermen playing mah-jongg.
“Until around 2004, I often took tourists out near the island to go fishing,” said a 50-year-old fisherman. “These days, I get turned back by Singaporean patrol ships.”
When I asked locals in Malaysia what they thought of the ICJ’s judgement, some responded that they knew nothing about it. But others spoke passionately and at length about Pedra Branca’s history.
“We’re closer to the island, so it should belong to us,” said Ramli Bin Mustapha, a 37-year-old candy merchant.
And 43-year-old Satiman Jamin, a reporter for the Malaysian newspaper New Straits Times, remembers the day when the ICJ ruling came through: the news gripped the nation.
Even so, local fishermen have calmly accepted the court’s decision, at least partly because the area around the island was not originally an important fishing ground.
“We have to respect the judgement,” said Abu Bakar Bin Mohamad, 65, head of a local cooperative that represents around 1,800 fishermen. “I don’t hear complaints about it anymore.”
Yang Zhen Sheng, 66, president of a seafood wholesale company, said he landed on Pedra Branca on numerous occasions when he was in his thirties.
“I was good friends with the lighthouse keeper, you see. We drank coffee together, and he let me take naps there. Once, he even showed me the lamp.”
Back then, with no restrictions on landing, Yang never gave much thought to which country the islet belonged.
But Yang says more regular patrols in waters nearby by Singaporean government vessels have had positive aspects for Malaysian fishermen. Fewer vessels are dumping oil and garbage now, and pirates from Indonesia have virtually disappeared.
“Ultimately, the judgement was a good thing,” he said.
THE PEDRA BRANCA DISPUTE
Pedra Branca is Portuguese for “white rock.” The British East India Company began operating a lighthouse there in 1851, when the straits had already become an important channel for global trade.
Malaysia and Singapore, in their current forms, were ruled by Britain for many years. After Japan’s occupation during World War II, the Federation of Malaya, a British protectorate, came into being in 1948; it gained independence in 1957. Singapore joined later, and in 1963 the Federation of Malaysia was established. However, factors such as tension between ethnic Chinese and Malays led to Singapore seceding two years later, which itself became an underlying factor in the Pedra Branca dispute.
The two nations asked the ICJ to decide the sovereignty of Pedra Branca, Middle Rocks and South Ledge. Until 2006, they continued to submit documentary evidence, and in 2007, they delivered oral testimony.
In 2008 the ICJ issued its judgement: that the islet belonged to Singapore, and that the Middle Rocks reef was Malaysian territory. No decision was reached over the ownership of the South Ledge, a rock which is submerged at high tide.
Document determines outcome of Singapore-Malaysia islet dispute
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