Sale upset Indonesia

Press, 8 July 1986, Page 10

Sale upset Indonesia

NZPA-Reuter Jakarta

Indonesia says an eighteenth century sunken ship’s treasure auctioned in Amsterdam for SUSIS million ($27.75 million) was stolen from its territorial waters and it is taking steps to prevent similar piracy. The Government is trying to find out how a group of Western treasure hunters left Indonesia with 150,000 pieces of Ching dynasty porcelain and 225 gold bars sold at a Christie’s auction in April and May, Antara news agency reported.

The treasure was salvaged from the Dutch East Indies Company schooner Geldermalsen which sank near the Malacca Straits in 1752. Britons, Singaporeans and a West German worked on the sal-

vage for 15 months from 1985.

The widely-publicised auction provoked an outcry in Indonesia, which claims the treasure is part of its cultural heritage.

The Foreign Minister, Mochtar Kusumaatmadja, who has a doctorate in international sea law, said last week that the treasure was stolen from Indonesian territorial waters, adding: “We should study this case very seriously and resolve it on principles.”

A Briton who led the treasure expedition, Michael Hatcher, said in Amsterdam that the wreck was in international waters. He declined to be more precise, saying only that it was in the South China Sea. Indonesian authorities

were aware of what he was doing and Air Force planes flew over his salvage yacht, he said. Indonesia planned to bolster its claim by using Navy divers to find the wreck, supposed to be south of Singapore, near Kijang Island, Rear Admiral Iman Taufik said. At least five other wrecks,, thought to contain rich cargoes, are lying at the bottom of the Malacca Straits, the newspaper “Sinar Harapan” reported.

There must be hundreds of sunken treasures like this one dating back 1000 years, throughout Indonesia’s 13,600-island archipelago, said a historian, Ong Hak Ham.

Jakarta — then Batavia — was the centre for eighteenth century Dutch and English trade in Chinese porcelain, he said.