Indonesia Sends Warship To Shadow Chinese Coast Guard Vessel

Indonesia has sent a warship to its North Natuna Sea to shadow a Chinese coast guard vessel that has been active in a resource-rich maritime area, the country’s naval chief said on Saturday of an area that both countries claim as their own, CNN reported, with Jakarta apparently telling Beijing it is not an imperial power that can call the South China Sea (SCS) as its lake.

Photo Insert: Indonesian coast guard ships conducting drills

Ship tracking data show the vessel, CCG 5901, has been sailing in the Natuna Sea, particularly near the Tuna Bloc gas field and the Vietnamese Chim Sao oil and gas field since December 30, the Indonesian Ocean Justice Initiative also told Reuters.

A warship, maritime patrol plane, and drone had been deployed to monitor the vessel, Laksamana Muhammad Ali, the chief of the Indonesian navy, revealed.

“The Chinese vessel has not conducted any suspicious activities,” he said. “However, we need to monitor it as it has been in Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) for some time.”

A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Jakarta was not immediately available for comment on whether the vessel lost its way to Hainan island or not. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) gives vessels navigation rights through an EEZ.

Under the UNCLOS, historical claims are the weakest argument to secure maritime features. China, which is located thousands of kilometers away from the Spratlys and Paracels, has landgrabbed seven maritime features in SCS and warned other countries to accept its bullying to maintain peace in the region.

Southeast Asia’s biggest nation says that under UNCLOS, the southern end of the South China Sea is its exclusive economic zone, and named the area as the North Natuna Sea in 2017.

China rejects this, saying the maritime area is within its expansive territorial claim in the SCS marked by a U-shaped “nine-dash line,” a boundary the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in the Hague found to have no legal basis in 2016.

The so-called nine-dash-line is based on the original 11-dash line drawn by Kuomintang oceanographers in 1947 to delineate the areas where China may claim islets, not underwater reefs, and seamounts. Mao, who was not interested in the SCS, yielded one line to Ho Chi Minh in the Haiphong area in 1954.

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