Indonesian-Vietnamese relations, not that great!

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I am a bit behind about this, but I saw this article from May 14, 2019 about a maritime clash between Indonesia and Vietnam. I have a bunch of thoughts about this, but the thing I was most surprised about this is how strong the opprobrium is of Indonesians towards these Vietnamese fishermen.

SOURCE: @ADELINAPOLI

SOURCE: @ADELINAPOLI

Quick rundown of what happened: A Vietnamese fishing surveillance vessel rammed an Indonesian naval vessel near Indonesia’s Natuna Islands. It rammed the naval vessel in order to prevent the Indonesians from seizing Vietnamese fishing vessels. Indonesia does seize a lot of Vietnamese fishing vessels (Indonesia destroyed 51 vessels back in April 4, most of them Vietnamese). About half of all vessels Indonesia seized are Vietnamese. The fisherman are taken into custody at the same time, forcing the Vietnamese to request their release, and potentially increasing tensions.

SOURCE: @BOEDESA

SOURCE: @BOEDESA

My thoughts:

  • ASEAN is shooting itself in the foot here. The big conflict over the South China Sea, it appears to me, is the conflict between China and all of the other countries rimming the sea. (I talked about this on April 19, 2019.) ASEAN needs to present a combined front to China, and this clash shows they are not. China will more easily be able to divide and conquer. As the author says in the article linked above: "This is not a good look for ASEAN.”

  • Vietnamese fishing vessels probably are pushing too far into Indonesian seas, and so I understand why the Indonesians would be unhappy. Especially because they are trying to limit fishing in their waters.

  • The Indonesians are very mad. See pictures up to the right. There is a twitter hashtag #StopVietnamIllegalFishing with lots of tweets. The estimated reach of the hashtag was more than 700,000, which isn’t that much, but still pretty high. Most of this was in early May. (The data comes from from Brand24.com.)

  • This was a political decision on the behalf of the Indonesian Minister of Marine Affairs & Fisheries, Susi Pudjiastuti. It got her a lot of attention and showed that she was aggressive in defending Indonesia. Her strong stance will likely allow her to keep her position in the second term of President Widodo. Or maybe even get her a bigger job. Also, she’s a badass woman with tattoos and smokes. Amazing.

  • It’s not just Vietnamese fishing vessels that are being seized by Indonesia. Chinese fisherman have been arrested, and the Indonesians fired at a Chinese fishing vessels.

  • But Pudjiastuti’s efforts have been very successful in safeguarding Indonesian fisheries. The WWF gave her an award for her work on sustainability. Because she stopped illegal fishing by others, overall fishing fell 25% but the local/domestic Indonesian fishermen (fisherpeople?) have benefited. (It’s a bit more complex than this, see the article for more details. Here’s another write up about it.)

  • I talked earlier (April 18) about the Indonesian elections. One thing I took away from the panel is that Widodo has little interest in foreign policy. That’s not great when ASEAN needs to defuse tensions among themselves and cooperate in facing China.

What to take away from all of this

It’s unfortunate that ASEAN is not dealing with China collectively. Collection action can work! See: unions, NATO, UN. But “illegal” fishing is also something that needs to be curtailed. Fisheries globally are declining precipitously, and even countries that are willing to limit fishing for their own citizens are unable to deal with that if illegal fishing continues. But there is probably a way to deal with foreign fishermen that doesn’t have to be so explosive. All of the countries involved should work to deescalate this tension. That will require cooperation, and it should start with ASEAN countries. And then they go to China as a group.

That’s my 2 cents. Let me know where I’m wrong!