‘s Opinion and Editorial – March 16, 2006
I Made Andi Arsana and Clive Schofield, New South Wales, Australia
It seems that conflicting claims concerning international boundaries between Indonesia and Malaysia will continue unabated. One very prominent case emerged last year over the Ambalat offshore area and it led to serious tension. While negotiations on Ambalat are still underway, another issue regarding the status of something called Gosong Niger has come to the fore.
The first critical questions to raise are: where and what is Gosong Niger? It is located approximately 5.5 nautical miles off the terminus of the Indonesian (Kalimantan) and Malaysian (Sarawak) land boundary at Tanjung Datu on the South China Sea coast of the island of Borneo. Gosong Niger is, in fact, a submerged ridge of alluvial sand in shallow water, and indeed the term “Gosong” equates to the English word “sandbar”. Read…
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