Sebatik Island (Pulau Sebatik) is an island off the eastern coast of Borneo, partly within Indonesia and partly within Malaysia. It has an area of approximately 452.2 square kilometres.1 The distance between Sebatik Island and the mainland of Borneo is between one and two kilometers.2
Sebatik Island lies in the Sebuku Bay (Teluk Sebuku). The Sabahan city of Tawau lies just to the north. The island is bisected along the 4° 10' North parallel by the Indonesia-Malaysia border - the northern part belongs to Sabah, Malaysia (Sebatik Malaysia) while the southern part belongs to East Kalimantan, Indonesia (Sebatik Indonesia).
Sebatik Malaysia has a population estimated to be approximately 25,000 against approximately 80,000 people in Sebatik Indonesia.3
The demarcated international border between Malaysia and Indonesia stops at the eastern edge of Sebatik Island, so that the ownership of small islands and area located in the East of Sebatik is unclear.4 This is one of the reasons why the waters east of Sebatik Island is the Ambalat region, center of a dispute between Indonesia and Malaysia in March. That and the fact that the area has crude oil deposits. The ambiguity of the border at the eastern edge is sometimes attributed as a reason causing the "loss" to Indonesia of two islands: Sipadan and Ligitan.5
While there are border guards on the Island, there is currently no immigration office, no customs house, no barbed wire fence and no walls demarcating the border. Instead, the only evidence of a border are the concrete piles buried every kilometer from east to west.6
Sebatik Island was one of the places in which heavy fighting took place between Indonesian troops and Malaysian troops during the 1963 Indonesia Malaysia Confrontation.
The North Borneo Timbers company operated a logging concession on the island until the 1980s and its mostly expatriate employees lived in a self-contained community in Wallace Bay. Sebatik Malaysia is within the parliamentary constituency of Kalabakan.
^http://islands.unep.ch/IHC.htm UN SYSTEM-WIDE EARTHWATCH Web Site ISLAND DIRECTORY and Sovereignty over Pulau Ligitan and Pulau Sipadan (Indonesia/Malaysia), DA Colson - American Journal of International Law, 2003]
^ Sovereignty over Pulau Ligitan and Pulau Sipadan (Indonesia/Malaysia), DA Colson - American Journal of International Law, 2003
