KL accuses S'pore of trying
to 'subvert' the status quo
Malaysia also says S'pore never replied to requests for copies of
Johor's 1844 letters
Straits Times, The
(Singapore)
Prime News, Pg 4
November 14, 2007
Author: Lydia Lim, Senior Political Correspondent
THE HAGUE (NETHERLANDS) - LAUNCHING its case before an
international court yesterday, Malaysia lost no time in attacking
Singapore's claim on Pedra Branca as an attempt to overturn the
status quo in the Singapore Strait.
Its first speaker, Tan Sri Abdul Kadir Mohamad, questioned
Singapore's motivation in asserting such a claim.
He called it a bid to 'subvert' a 150-year-old arrangement by
Malaysia for the Horsburgh lighthouse on Pedra Branca to be
operated from Singapore.
The lawyer and Foreign Affairs Adviser to Malaysia's Prime Minister
also sought to paint to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) an
image of Singapore as an expansionist state.
He suggested that the Republic would - if allowed to - upset the
peace and stability of the eastern part of the Singapore Strait,
the site of the disputed island.
Singapore, he told the court, has a 'very active reclamation
policy'.
In 1978, it conceived plans to reclaim the waters around Pedra
Branca to construct an artificial island some 5,000 sq m in size,
he noted.
'Quite apart from the possible effects on the environment and
navigation in the Strait, this could lead to potentially serious
changes to the security arrangements in the eastern entrance of the
Strait,' he said.
Singapore and Malaysia are appearing before the ICJ to resolve
their dispute over the sovereignty of Pedra Branca, an island 40km
east of Singapore.
Malaysia is giving its oral pleadings this week, after Singapore
did so last week.
In its arguments, Singapore had made no secret of its 1978 tender
to reclaim land around Pedra Branca.
It had argued that the reclamation tender was proof that it had all
along exercised state authority over the island. No state, it
pointed out, would set out to reclaim land around an island it
thought belonged to someone else.
Yesterday, Tan Sri Abdul Kadir also charged that Singapore began
mounting 24-hour naval patrols around Pedra Branca in 1986.
Its naval boats chased away Malaysian fishermen and made it
impossible for the Malaysian navy to approach the area without
provoking a skirmish, he added.
Malaysia, he said, chose 'non-confrontation' in the face of
Singapore's actions.
Singapore had made clear in its pleadings that it had been
patrolling the waters there since the inception of its navy in
1975, well before the dispute arose.
Tan Sri Abdul Kadir and Malaysia's international counsel, Sir Elihu
Lauterpacht, also sought to cast aspersions on Singapore's conduct
in its dealings with its neighbour.
They referred to two letters of 1844 in which the Johor rulers gave
permission to the Governor of Singapore to build a lighthouse on
any of the islands near Point Romania.
Malaysia has argued that the letters proved that Pedra Branca was
thus among those islands under Johor's sovereignty.
Yesterday, Tan Sri Abdul Kadir said that in 1994, Malaysia wrote to
Singapore asking for a copy of the Governor's letter. But Singapore
never replied.
'If this letter exists today, it is likely that it is in
Singapore's archives in the file entitled 'Letters to Native
Rulers'. Unfortunately, Malaysia does not have access to these
archives,' he said.
In its written pleadings, Singapore had pointed out the letters
should be in Malaysia's possession as the Governor had sent them to
the Johor rulers.
Yesterday, Malaysia also argued that Pulau Batu Puteh, its name for
Pedra Branca, had always been part of the Johor sultanate.
Despite the tough talk in court, the sitting began on a friendly
note with Deputy Prime Minister S. Jayakumar exchanging greetings
with Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar. Malaysia
continues its arguments today.
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MORE REPORTS, HOME H6
S'pore activities on island
irrelevant: KL
It says island 'has been part of Johor Sultanate since 16th
century'
Straits Times, The
(Singapore)
Home, Pg H6
November 14, 2007
Author: Lydia Lim, Senior Political Correspondent
THE HAGUE (NETHERLANDS) - MALAYSIA yesterday urged an international
court to reject as irrelevant all Singapore has done on Pedra
Branca since 1851 to show it exercised state authority over the
disputed island.
Its international counsel, Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, argued that it
was Johor, not Singapore, that has had title or sovereignty over
the island.
Therefore, Singapore could not 'confirm and maintain' its title to
the island through activities, as it had claimed, since it had no
such title to begin with, Sir Elihu told the International Court of
Justice.
'Just as we are taught in school...that when zero is multiplied by
any number whatsoever, the result is always zero, so a title that
does not exist cannot be confirmed and maintained by any amount of
subsequent State action,' Sir Elihu argued.
Singapore's stand is that Pedra Branca was a remote and uninhabited
island that belonged to no one when the British took legal
possession of it in 1847 in order to build a lighthouse
there.
After the lighthouse was completed in 1851, the British crown and
later Singapore confirmed and maintained their title to the island
through a range of activities which included naval patrols and the
control of access to the island, it said.
These activities, it argued last week, amounted to an open,
continuous and effective display of state authority over Pedra
Branca, against which Malaysia failed to protest.
Yesterday, Malaysia sought to brush aside all these activities in
one sweep by deeming them irrelevant.
Sir Elihu told the court that the issue of sovereignty boiled down
to whether Pedra Branca was terra nullius in 1847, as was claimed
by Singapore.
The Latin phrase means no man's land or belonging to no one.
Both he and Malaysia's Ambassador to the Netherlands, Datuk Noor
Farida Ariffin, mounted arguments to back Malaysia's claim that
Pedra Branca had never been terra nullius because it had always
been part of the old Johor Sultanate dating back to the 16th
century.
Datuk Noor Farida, a lawyer, described the geographical extent of
what she termed its large maritime empire.
'The extensive reach of the old Sultanate of Johor is recorded in
the Malay annals and confirmed in all 18th- and early 19th-century
descriptions,' she said.
She then went on to describe its territory as extending all the way
north to the Natunas islands in the South China Sea, and all the
way south to the islands in the Riau-Lingga archipelago, and
covering all the islands in the Singapore Strait including Pulau
Batu Puteh, Malaysia's name for Pedra Branca.
She also stressed Pedra Branca's closeness to the Malaysian
peninsula by flashing on a screen a photograph of the disputed
island with Johor's hills in the background.
Last week, Singapore said Malaysia's claim that Pedra Branca was
part of the old Johor sultanate was vague and not backed by
historical evidence. It also argued that the boundaries of a
traditional South-east Asian kingdom were based on who the people
in an area paid allegiance to, rather than on clear territorial
limits.
It also highlighted that the physical proximity of a disputed
territory to a claimant state was not considered to be a valid
point in international law.
Yesterday, Sir Elihu also quoted from eight documents, which he
said provided 'conclusive' proof that Pedra Branca had belonged to
Johor.
These included two letters by the British Resident in Singapore
John Crawfurd which, Sir Elihu said, described the Johor Sultanate
as including all the islands in the China Sea 'as far as the
Natunas'.
However, Singapore had pointed out that none of those documents
referred to Pedra Branca by name, except for a newspaper article in
the Singapore Free Press, which its counsel had shown to be
unreliable.
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Copyright, 2007, Singapore Press Holdings Limited
