European bailiffs could soon start seizing Malaysian state-owned property over a land dispute dating back to 1878.
A billion-dollar lawsuit between the heirs of a historic sultanate and the Malaysian government over land awards signed during the era of British imperialism, threatens to further cloud European relations with the Southeast Asian country.
Malaysia already accuses the European Union of infringing upon its sovereignty through environmental policies that will ban imports of palm oil, one of its main agricultural goods, in a case that the World Trade Organization (WTO) is expected to rule on this year.
Kuala Lumpur claims this is mere protectionism from Brussels, while Malaysia’s former minister of Plantation Industries and Commodities, Zuraida Kamaruddin, called the EU’s policy “crop apartheid.”
Despite attempts to kickstart negotiations on a free-trade agreement, relations could be muddied further amid the potential confiscation of Malaysian-owned property in Europe over a 19th century land dispute.
Last year, a French arbitration court ordered the Malaysian government to pay around €15 billion ($16 billion) to the descendants of the Sulu sultanate over an 1878 land deal, although that order has now been put on hold. Earlier this month, Malaysian officials in Paris were able to prevent French authorities from confiscating several properties in the French capital.
These jurisdictions, for example, Spain, Luxembourg, France… We want their governments to respect our government… How can a commercial arbitrator come and question our sovereignty?” Malaysia’s law minister, Azalina Othman Said, said in a parliamentary speech earlier this month.
Europe’s colonial legacy “has become an important obstacle in the EU’s efforts to upgrade relations with African nations,” noted Shada Islam, a Brussels-based specialist on European Union affairs. But, so far, it hasn’t been such an important topic of opprobrium in Southeast Asia.
“References to colonial practices are sometimes made in reference to what Southeast Asian nations view as the EU’s restrictive trade policies, especially as regards palm oil, but these are largely in off-the-record comments, not in official discourses,” she added.
But the colonial legacy still lingers. Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, was forced to apologize after his remarks last year in which he described Europe as an idyllic “garden” and the rest of the world as mostly a “jungle.”
“Some have misinterpreted the metaphor as ‘colonial Euro-centrism,’” Borrell wrote in a blog post in October. “I am sorry if some have felt offended.”
What is now Malaysia gained its independence from Britain in 1957, while all Southeast Asian nations except Thailand were at one point colonized by a European power. Many also underwent Japanese occupation in the 1940s, and the Philippines was once a colony of the United States.