Reblogged from my Facebook post:
I just went through the application documents on ICJ site, the three documents submitted are not likely to be significant... in fact, I think it is quite a joke.
Document 1: The reference to Horsburgh Light is part of an entire string of references to denote the proposed international passage corridor through the Singapore Strait. From one end to the other. And Horsburgh Light is mentioned because it is used to denote the South China Sea end of the strait. It is hard to see how this links to thinking about sovereignty, but I guess not everyone can understand the Queen's English which was used in the telegram. (sarcasm fully intended)
Document 2: Quite a joke. The entire document does not give specific latitude/longitude position of the ship in question. "Near Horsburgh Light" can mean different things to different people. Near can be 1m, 100m, 1km, 1nm, 5nm, and in any of the 360 degrees of the compass. And all who ply that part of the sea knows the distance between Horsburgh Light to the Malaysian coast is not that far in the first place. Exactly where was Labuan Haji?
Document 3: Seems to be a document on curfews and no fishing zones to protect mainland Singapore from infiltration from Indonesian side. This is during the period when we were seeing Communist activities, and just prior to Konfrontasi. I don't think security forces on Singapore were worried about Horsburgh Light being infiltrated as much as the entire coastline that we have facing south. By the way, the map does not show Pedra Branca in the first place. Maybe it was in another part of the document... we won't know unless we have the whole document in full, instead of just a single page that shows the main island of Singapore.
I just went through the application documents on ICJ site, the three documents submitted are not likely to be significant... in fact, I think it is quite a joke.
Document 1: The reference to Horsburgh Light is part of an entire string of references to denote the proposed international passage corridor through the Singapore Strait. From one end to the other. And Horsburgh Light is mentioned because it is used to denote the South China Sea end of the strait. It is hard to see how this links to thinking about sovereignty, but I guess not everyone can understand the Queen's English which was used in the telegram. (sarcasm fully intended)
Document 2: Quite a joke. The entire document does not give specific latitude/longitude position of the ship in question. "Near Horsburgh Light" can mean different things to different people. Near can be 1m, 100m, 1km, 1nm, 5nm, and in any of the 360 degrees of the compass. And all who ply that part of the sea knows the distance between Horsburgh Light to the Malaysian coast is not that far in the first place. Exactly where was Labuan Haji?
Document 3: Seems to be a document on curfews and no fishing zones to protect mainland Singapore from infiltration from Indonesian side. This is during the period when we were seeing Communist activities, and just prior to Konfrontasi. I don't think security forces on Singapore were worried about Horsburgh Light being infiltrated as much as the entire coastline that we have facing south. By the way, the map does not show Pedra Branca in the first place. Maybe it was in another part of the document... we won't know unless we have the whole document in full, instead of just a single page that shows the main island of Singapore.
No comments:
Post a Comment