On Monday (24 Oct), a video involving a confrontation between a few Malaysian fishermen and the Singapore Police Coast Guards (PCG) surfaced on the internet.
From the cameraman’s perspective, it appears that the fishermen’s boats were moving towards the PCG’s boat, and the confrontation descends into a full-blown argument in rapid fire Malay.
Reportedly, the incident happened around 5:30pm on Sunday (23 Oct).
It was said that 10 Malaysian fishermen were installing their shrimp nets in the Pasir Laba area near Second Link bridge when they heard a warning over the loudspeakers, telling them to remove themselves from the area.
Member of the State Legislative Assembly (ADUN), Datuk Pandak Ahmad quoted the fishermen, stating that they were driven away with abusive words.
The fishermen also claimed that they were anchoring their nets in the Johor Strait and criticised the PCG for breaking into the territorial water of Malaysia.
Facebook user Saluddin Ismail remarks, “The Singapore maritime issue [of] driving away local fishermen in Malaysian waters is not the first time, it has happened for a long time, just not publicized.”
He adds that residents in Johor Bahru can spot PCG boats watching the border of the Tebrau Strait all the time, but there are rarely any Malaysian maritime boats.
Saluddin goes on to demand where all the Malaysian coastal authorities are, since he is affronted by PCG entering Malaysian waters without impunity.
“Until when will this border issue show the weakness of Malaysian authorities in keeping the sovereignty of the country from being careless. Whether it’s the land or sea border, foreigners so easily invade our border… What is the proof? Flowing of immigrants without permission [from] Rohingya, Indonesia freely entering Malaysia…” Saluddin writes, stressing that the Malaysian authorities should conduct one operation at least to show that they still exist.
The video has over 13,000 as of writing this article.
Singapore Police Force’s Response
In response to the incident between the PCG and Malaysian fishing vessels, the Singapore Police Force (SPF) stated that they are aware of the allegations and said that they are wholly untrue.
Apparently, the PCG had noticed a group of Malaysian fishing boats entering and exiting the live firing range of Singapore’s territorial waters off Lim Chu Kang.
“Unauthorised vessels are strictly prohibited from entering the live firing area, for their own safety. PCG officers thus approached the Malaysian fishing vessels and used the public address on the PCG boat to advise them to leave the live firing area in Singapore Territorial Waters,” said the police.
However, at around 5:28pm, a few Malaysian fishing vessels approached the PCG officers, as evinced by the video.
The PCG officers explained the reason for the warning and told the fishermen to leave for their own safety.
The police stated that after a “verbal exchange” – what a nice way to phrase the argument – the Malaysian boats returned to their own territorial waters at around 5:37pm.
The last line of the post read, “This exchange took place entirely in Singapore Territorial Waters.”
The capitalisation of the last three words is completely necessary.
Netizens’ Response
The comment section below the SPF’s Facebook post has turned into its own warzone.
Seriously, the post has more than 7,700 comments, which is crazy because this is Facebook in 2022.
I have no idea how people went from talking about trespassing territorial waters to criticising Singaporean aircrafts and vehicles for entering Malaysia (as if we don’t clear customs or contact the air control towers before doing so), but it happened.
There were several mentions of Singaporean cars entering Malaysia just to take advantage of the cheap Ron95 petrol too.
Which, admittedly, some of the bad apples did, but this argument doesn’t make any sense in this context.
Netizens also started pointing out about how Malaysia supplies water for Singapore to purify before selling it back, and about how Malaysia will eventually reclaim Pedra Blanca. Some even went as far as saying that Singapore will join Malaysia again—
Um, thanks but no thanks?
We like our sovereignty.
Singaporeans being Singaporeans, are not one to back out of an argument, so they commented that the Malaysian fishermen were being unreasonable. After all, the PCG were chasing them away for their own safety, and yet they are complaining.
A random commenter even hurled out the recent exchange rate of “SGD$1 = RM3.34” for some weird reason, and poked fun at Malaysia’s corruption, remarking that this issue could have been easily settled if the PCG officer just put an RM50 bill in the handshake.
The more level-headed netizens commented that Singapore and Malaysia should coexist peacefully and that we need each other to thrive.
In short, the comment section is a mess of misplaced national pride and mutual resentment, plus some resignation.
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