Great Karimun ( id, Karimun Besar), also known as Nuwi Island, is one of the islands in the

Riau Islands The Riau Islands ( id, Kepulauan Riau) is a province of Indonesia. It comprises a total of 1,796 islands scattered between Sumatra, Malay Peninsula, and Borneo including the Riau Archipelago. Situated on one of the world's busiest shipping lan ...

province of

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Gui ...

, administratively part of

Karimun Regency The Karimun Regency is located in the Riau Islands Province, Indonesia. Besides the central island of Great Karimun, the regency also includes the islands of Kundur and over 240 smaller islands. The district covers a land area of 1,524 km2 ...

. It lies about 37 km southwest of

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

, 54 km west of

Batam Batam is the largest city in the province of Riau Islands, Indonesia. The city administrative area covers three main islands of Batam, Rempang, and Galang (collectively called Barelang), as well as several small islands. Batam Island is the c ...

, 24 km northeast of Rangsang Island and 32 km north of Kundur Island.

History

In the past, Great Karimun Island was the destination of foreign traders and the Malay Kings. Sixteenth century Portuguese reports claimed that the island was inhabited, possibly by the

Orang Laut The Orang Laut are several seafaring ethnic groups and tribes living around Singapore, peninsular Malaysia and the Indonesian Riau Islands. The Orang Laut are commonly identified as the Orang Seletar from the Straits of Johor, but the term ma ...

. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the island was part of the

Johor Sultanate The Johor Sultanate ( ms, Kesultanan Johor or ; also called the Sultanate of Johor, Johor-Pahang, or the Johor Empire) was founded by Malaccan Sultan Mahmud Shah's son, Sultan Alauddin Riayat Shah II in 1528. Johor was part of the Malaccan ...

then the

Riau-Lingga Sultanate Riau-Lingga Sultanate ( Malay/ Indonesian: کسلطانن رياوليڠݢ, ''Kesultanan Riau-Lingga''), also known as the Lingga-Riau Sultanate, Riau Sultanate or Lingga Sultanate was a Malay sultanate that existed from 1824 to 1911, before ...

. Around 1615 agents of the

Dutch East India Company The United East India Company ( nl, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the VOC) was a chartered company established on the 20th March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies into the first joint-stock ...

(VOC) inspected the northwestern coast of the island for the possible construction of a fortification. The proposed fort, however, was never built. Two centuries later, Colonel William Farquhar surveyed the island after receiving permission from the Bugis Raja Muda of Johor, Raja Ja'afar. Although Karimun was deemed to be of great strategic value at the confluence of the Singapore and Melaka Straits, it was found to have insufficient sources fresh water to sustain a British trading post and a settlement.C. Mary Turnbull, A History of Modern Singapore (Singapore: NUS Press, 2009), p. 27.

Geography

The island's main city is

Tanjung Balai Karimun Tanjung Balai Karimun ( Jawi: , ) often abbreviated Tg. Balai, is the main town at the southern end of the Great Karimun Island (''Pulau Karimunbesar''), part of the Karimun Regency within the Riau Islands Province of Indonesia. It is often call ...

. As at the 2020 Census, the regency of Karimun had a population of 253,457 with the majority of the people living in Great Karimun. Notable landmarks on the island include Mount Jantan, the beaches of

Pelawan Pelawan is a state constituency in Sarawak, Malaysia, that has been represented in the Sarawak State Legislative Assembly The Sarawak State Legislative Assembly is the legislative chamber of the unicameral legislature of the Malaysian st ...

and Pongkar, and the Pongkar Waterfall.

Economics

The island has strategic geographical importance, as it is near the

Straits of Malacca The Strait of Malacca is a narrow stretch of water, 500 mi (800 km) long and from 40 to 155 mi (65–250 km) wide, between the Malay Peninsula ( Peninsular Malaysia) to the northeast and the Indonesian island of Sumatra to the southwest, co ...

, an international shipping route. As the island is strategically located at the border of Singapore and Johor (in Malaysia), Karimun being a part of the Riau Islands also is included the SIJORI Growth Triangle partnership. SIJORI (Singapore-Johor-Riau Islands) Growth Triangle is a strategic partnership among Singapore, Johor and Riau Islands that combine the individual and collective strength to improve the subregion attractiveness to investors from both the region and international. SIJORI links the infrastructure, capital, expertise and rich culture of Singapore with the natural resources, lands and labour resources of Johor and Riau Islands. However, due to the stronger ties between Singapore and Malaysia, Karimun is losing its economic attraction to Singaporean investments. Another reason for the loss in attractiveness is the lack of adequate infrastructure in Karimun, especially electricity supply and the lack of transparency in the government administration.

Natural resources

Due to large scale indiscriminate fishing activity near the island recently, fish stocks have been depleted, and thus the fishing businesses have declined considerably. The main export of the island is its

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies un ...

which is one of the best quality in the world.

Sand Sand is a granular material composed of finely divided mineral particles. Sand has various compositions but is defined by its grain size. Sand grains are smaller than gravel and coarser than silt. Sand can also refer to a textural class ...

has also been constantly exported, mainly to

for land reclamation. Indonesian has however limited sand exports over concerns with Singapore's reclamation projects, and banned them outright in the beginning of 2007.

References

External links