exercise of right of innocent passage. Bateman argues that the difference between a
‘freedom’ and a ‘right’ may be marginal in English but is discernible when translated
into Bahasa Indonesia. In Bahasa, a ‘freedom’ is a kebebasan, and a ‘right’ is a hak.
Whereas a kebebasan is absolutely free, a hak invariably has this connotation of a
favour being granted wherein one who grants the favour retains the right to set forth
the conditions on the favour. This underlying understanding of right as hak is
possibly one of the reasons behind a State such as Indonesia’s high sensitivity to
the regime of innocent passage.
There is also the possibility of differences in understanding of the breadth of the
territorial seas, particularly in the case of an archipelagic State which is entitled to
draw straight baselines
19 (e.g. Indonesia) and in the case of international straits
within territorial seas
20 (e.g. Iran and the Strait of Hormuz).
In the former case, between December 2013 and January 2014, several Royal
Australian Navy and Australian Customs vessels entered Indonesian territorial
waters in connection with Operation Sovereign Borders apparently owing to a
PASSAGE THROUGH
TERRITORIAL WATERS
Action
Temporal
Spatial
Cargo
Social
Inherent
EFFECT OF
IMPEDING
OR
PASSAGE
LIKELY
TO BE
TREATED
NOTINNOCENT
Fig. 1 The six dimensions of impingement on right of innocent passage
19 UNCLOS Article 47, Archipelagic baselines, pp. 40–41.
20 UNCLOS Part III, Straits used for International Navigation, Section 2, Transit Passage,
pp. 36–39.
230
A. Hebbar