- Sebatik Island
Sebatik Island ("Pulau Sebatik") is an island off the eastern coast of
Borneo , partly withinIndonesia and partly withinMalaysia . It has an area of approximately 452.2 square kilometres. [ [http://islands.unep.ch/IHC.htm UN SYSTEM-WIDE EARTHWATCH Web SiteISLAND DIRECTORY and "Sovereignty over Pulau Ligitan and Pulau Sipadan (Indonesia/Malaysia)", DA Colson - American Journal of International Law, 2003] ] The distance between Sebatik Island and the mainland of Borneo is between one and two kilometers. [Sovereignty over Pulau Ligitan and Pulau Sipadan (Indonesia/Malaysia), DA Colson - American Journal of International Law, 2003]Sebatik Island lies in the Sebuku Bay ("Teluk Sebuku"). The Sabahan city of
Tawau lies just to the north. The island is bisected along the 4° 10' North parallel by the Indonesia-Malaysia border - the northern part belongs toSabah ,Malaysia ("Sebatik Malaysia") while the southern part belongs toEast Kalimantan ,Indonesia ("Sebatik Indonesia").Sebatik Malaysia has a population estimated to be approximately 25,000 against approximately 80,000 people in Sebatik Indonesia. [ [http://www.etawau.com/HTML/SebatikIsland.htm Tawu City Website, Article: "Universiti Malaysia Sabah will set up a base station at Sebatik Island to facilitate studies on sea mammals in the surrounding waters here".] ]
The demarcated international border between Malaysia and Indonesia stops at the eastern edge of Sebatik Island, so that the ownership of small islands and area located in the East of Sebatik is unclear. [ [http://geo-boundaries.blogspot.com/2005/04/ambalat-spatial-perspective1.html Ambalat: A Spatial Perspective, by I. Made Andi Arsana of The School of Surveying and Spatial Information Systems, The University of New South Wales, 2005.] ] This is one of the reasons why the waters east of Sebatik Island is the Ambalat region, center of a dispute between Indonesia and Malaysia in March. That and the fact that the area has crude oil deposits. The ambiguity of the border at the eastern edge is sometimes attributed as a reason causing the "loss" to Indonesia of two islands: Sipadan and Ligitan. [ [http://geo-boundaries.blogspot.com/2005/04/ambalat-spatial-perspective1.html Ambalat: A Spatial Perspective, by I. Made Andi Arsana of The School of Surveying and Spatial Information Systems, The University of New South Wales, 2005.] ]
While there are border guards on the Island, there is currently no immigration office, no customs house, no barbed wire fence and no walls demarcating the border. Instead, the only evidence of a border are the concrete piles buried every kilometer from east to west. [ [http://pixelscribbles.com/journal/2005/08/sebatik-island.html Blog 2005] ]
Sebatik Island was one of the places in which heavy fighting took place between Indonesian troops and Malaysian troops during the 1963 Indonesia Malaysia Confrontation.
The North Borneo Timbers company operated a logging concession on the island until the 1980s and its mostly expatriate employees lived in a self-contained community in
Wallace Bay . Sebatik Malaysia is within the parliamentary constituency ofKalabakan .ee also
List of divided islands References
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