Armed Indonesian troops have hoisted their nation’s red and white flag over a remote island and proudly reclaimed its sovereignty from an Aussie surfer.
The military recently landed on tiny Mengkudu – a palm-fringed speck lying between Bali and Timor – after angry villagers from a neighboring island accused an Australian expatriate of banning them from visiting his out-of-the-way surf camp.
Colonel Airwind Nokbola, the military commander for East Nusa Tenggara province, said 17-armed soldiers were now stationed on the traditionally uninhabited island, which has Indian Ocean surf break of international repute just southeast of Sumba. Various counts say Indonesia has between 17,000 and 18,000 islands and Nokbola made it clear it intends to hang on to all of them.
“My troops raised the Indonesian flag when they arrived on Mengkudu,” Colonel Nokbola told AAP today. “It is ours.”
He said village leaders living on a nearby island had complained that Australian David Wylie, 54, originally of Gosford, would only take foreigners to his surf camp on Mengkudu.
Local anger towards the surf tour operator has become so intense that Colonel Nokbola said his troops were at the ready to diffuse any possible violence.
Some local leaders were even spreading rumors he was an “Australian spy”. “We need to protect (Mr Wylie’s) safety because we know the local people don’t like him and we wouldn’t like to see them do something to him,” he said.
Colonel Nokbola said Wylie had been living in Indonesia since 1973 and married the daughter of a tribal chief from Selura Island, near Mengkudu, in 2001. He had permission from the East Nusa Tenggara provincial government to set up a surf camp on Mengkudu and had built a few basic amenities for occasional surfing tourists. However, Colonel Nokbola said he had not obtained various permits from the local government on nearby Sumba island, which is also renowned for its surf and animistic culture.
Mr Wylie lived most of the year in Sumba, where he operates another surf camp. He was not easily contactable; friends said after AAP’s attempts to reach him for comment failed. Wylie opened the Mengkudu surf camp in 2001 with three Finnish partners, Colonel Nokbola said. “This is only a small problem and we do not want to kick him off the island,” Colonel Nokbola said. “But just because he’s stayed there a long time does not make it his.
“We have to safeguard our outlying islands, we do not want this situation to be like Sipadan-Ligitan,” he said, referring to two islands that were the subject of a drawn-out territorial dispute between Indonesia and Malaysia.
A recent international ruling ceded the islands near Borneo to Malaysia. Australians who knew Wylie were shocked by the news. One man who also has a surf resort on Sumba said he suspected Wylie had upset a village leader or not put money into the right local pockets.
Another Australian with a surf resort on Bali went on one of Wylie’s tours several years ago. Wylie told him about some Finnish men who were buying into the Mengkudu camp and persistently invited him to invest, the man said.
