Yahoo – AFP,
Dessy Sagita, November 17, 2016
The Dutch and Indonesian naval commanders laid a wreath during a 2014 ceremony to commemorate the 1150 sailors who died in the Battle of the Java Sea in 1942 (AFP Photo) |
Jakarta
(AFP) - Indonesia refused to take the blame Thursday for the disappearance of
at least six British and Dutch World War II shipwrecks -- considered war graves
-- that investigators believe could have been salvaged for scrap.
Former
colonial ruler The Netherlands has launched a probe into how three Dutch navy
ships seemingly vanished from the bed of the Java Sea, while Britain has urged
Indonesia to investigate what has happened to three of its vessels.
It is
believed the military wrecks -- lost in 1942 during the Battle of the Java Sea
-- were removed by illegal scavengers looking for scrap metal, an effort that
could have taken years.
More than
900 Dutch and 250 Indo-Dutch sailors died during the battle in which the Allied
navies suffered a disastrous defeat by the Imperial Japanese Navy.
Indonesian
authorities have sought to distance themselves from the mystery, saying they
could not be expected to protect the sites without assistance.
"The
Dutch government cannot blame the Indonesian government because they never
asked us to protect those ships," said Bambang Budi Utomo, head of the
National Archeological Centre under the Ministry of Education and Culture.
"As
there was no agreement or announcement, when the ships go missing, it is not
our responsibility."
Amateur
divers in 2002 discovered the long-lost wrecks of three Dutch ships, 60 years
after they sank while in action against Japanese forces.
But an
international expedition that sailed to the wreck site ahead of next year's
75th anniversary of the battle was shocked to discover the wrecks had vanished.
Britain
expressed its distress at the disappearance of its own warships and asked
Indonesia to "take appropriate action" to protect the sites from
further disturbance.
But Utomo
said Indonesia did not have the resources to maintain a constant patrol over
its vast archipelago, a hotspot for other criminal enterprises like illegal
fishing and people smuggling.
Row over
naval war graves (AFP Photo)
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'Looters
are fearless'
Treasure
hunters and scrap collectors are lured to Indonesia's relic-rich seas, experts
say, where countless vessels have gone to a watery grave over centuries of
trade, colonial conquest and war.
"Looting
is really huge, not only on these World War II shipwrecks, but also on ancient
shipwrecks," said Veronique Degroot, a Jakarta-based archaeologist.
The prize
find for scavengers targeting the warships would be the huge bronze propellers
used to power these juggernauts -- a far more lucrative find than iron or other
scrap, according to Utomo.
"The
looting must have been going on for years for such a huge ship to
disappear," he said.
"Looters
are fearless," he added, saying that divers risked death and injury
sucking air through tubes to retrieve valuable scrap and antiquities, taking
the wreck apart piece by piece.
While some
larger, commercial operations use cranes and platforms to wrench heavy loads
from the seabed, smaller ventures keep a low profile as they ship metal to
scrapyards along Indonesia's thousands of kilometres of coastline.
Australia
has been working closely with Indonesia to protect HMAS Perth -- which sunk off
Java in World War II, claiming hundreds of lives -- after discovering in 2013
that the warship was being plundered for brass.
A spokesman
for the Indonesian navy said the missing ships should not have been disturbed
as they were war graves.
"However,
the Indonesian navy cannot monitor all areas all the time," spokesman Gig
Jonias Mozes Sipasulta told AFP.
"If
they ask why the ships are missing, I'm going to ask them back, why didn't they
guard the ships? They should have been more proactive."
Naval
warships and war graves are protected under international law that makes the
desecration of such shipwrecks illegal.
The HNLMS
Kortenaer in the 1930s
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