Pedra Branca, Singapore
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Pedra Branca, also known as Pulau Batu Puteh and Batu Puteh, is a small island at the western edge of the South China Sea. It in the eastern entrance of the Straits of Singapore.[1] It is the easternmost point of Singapore.
History
Horsburgh Lighthouse was built on the island between 1847 and 1851.[1]
The island was the subject of a dispute between Malaysia and Singapore. In 2008, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Pedra Branca is part of Singapore.[1]
On 2 February 2017, Malaysia applied to the ICJ pursuant to Article 61 of the Statute of the ICJ for the revision of the 2008 judgment[2] on the basis of three documents it had obtained from The National Archives of the UK between August 2016 and January 2017. The documents were internal correspondence of Singapore's colonial government in 1958, an incident report submitted by a British naval officer in the same year, and a 1960s map of naval operations bearing annotations. The Malaysian Government said that these documents indicated that "officials at the highest levels in the British colonial and Singaporean administration appreciated that Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh did not form part of Singapore’s sovereign territory" during the relevant period.[3]
Pedra Branca, Singapore Media
The approximate location of Pedra Branca in the South China Sea in relation to the countries surrounding it
A replica of Long Ya Men at the Labrador Nature Reserve, put up in 2005 as part of the Singapore Zheng He's 600th Anniversary Celebrations
Detail of a 1620 "Map of Sumatra" by Hessel Gerritz, a cartographer with the Hydrographic Service of the Dutch East India Company. The location of the island of "Pedrablanca" (Pedra Branca) is marked
Thomas and William Daniell's etching of Pedra Branca before the building of Horsburgh Lighthouse, c. 1820
Horsburgh Lighthouse, a painting by John Turnbull Thomson (1821–1884) showing the island of Pedra Branca just after the completion of the lighthouse in 1851, which he designed.
A sketch by Thomson showing Chinese stonecutters from the "Kay tribe" (that is, of Hakka origin) at work in a quarry on Pulau Ubin, an island off the northeast coast of Singapore, which supplied granite for the lighthouse on Pedra Branca.
The Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands, the seat of the International Court of Justice
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), "International Court of Justice – Case concerning sovereignty over Pedra Branca, Middle Rocks and South Ledge"; retrieved 2013-4-26.
- ↑ "Malaysia seeks revision of ICJ ruling on Pulau Batu Puteh", The Star, 4 February 2017, archived from the original on 7 February 2017.
- ↑ "Malaysia cites 3 British documents from 1950s and 1960s in Pedra Branca challenge", Today, 4 February 2017, archived from the original on 4 February 2017.
