Losing Islands

On 17 December 2002, the International Court of Justice has decided that Indonesia must release its sovereignty over the islands of Simpadan and Ligitan, to Malaysia.

Soon afterward, Foreign Minister Hasan Wirayuda was quoted by website of the Defence Department as saying that our government accepted said Court's decision. He added the reason we loose those islands because our country’s territorial borders are unclear.
Many protests were raised against said Court’s decision and our government’s failure to keep those islands. But the government at that time refused to be blamed because Court case was initiated in 1997 by the previous government.

After loosing those islands, according to Tempointeraktif, Indonesia still have 17,506 other islands, many of which are inhabited and have been given names, many others are still uninhabited and nameless.

A few days ago, the news media reported about the sinking of two islands i.e. Bangkai Island (10 Hectare) & Satu Island (2 Hectare), which are part of the Islands of Enggano in Bengkulu Province, Sumatera.
As the cause of sinking was abrasion of the land by high rising sea water. Actually, the abrasion can be minimized by planting Mangrove and trees that would serve as reservoir of rain water in the earth, and forbidding the use of Tiger Fishing Net and Bombs for catching fish.
If the condition does not improve, it is predicted that two nearby islands, i.e Dua Island (11 Hectare) and Marbau Island (7 Hectare) may sink in the next five years.

Considering the above mentioned facts, I hope that more serious efforts would be made to retrieve the sinking islands and to stop sea water abrasion of the other islands so that we would not be losing anymore island.