It’s a seemingly never ending, nerve wracking game of sharks and minnows; every Filipino fisherman or every man guarding our seas may feel extra jittery nowadays whenever the job takes them to the disputed waters, sweaty even in the cold, biting sea breeze.
Nobody knows for sure how it will end, this lingering geopolitical spat between Manila and Beijing.
For now, what is clear is that the tensions between sea authorities from both the Philippines and China are as strong as the current and the towering waves in the disputed seas.
Dangerous maneuvers of Chinese ships continue and the aggressive actions have not abated, says the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).
On Friday the 13th, as the AFP reported, China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy Ship 621 shadowed our very own, the Philippine Navy (PN)’s BRP Benguet at an 80-yard distance and attempted to cross its bow at 5.8 Nautical Miles SouthWest of Pag-asa Island.
Our vessel was en-route to Rizal Reef Station for a resupply mission.
Will this dispute ever end? When and how?
I listened to Justice Antonio Carpio, a true patriot and staunch defender of our sovereignty, last week to hear his recommendation on how the Philippines can finally resolve this issue.
There I was inside the august halls of the University of the Philippines College of Law’s Malcolm Hall in Diliman, listening intently as Justice Carpio gave his lecture titled “Philippine Island Territories in the West Philippine Sea.”
The lecture, part of the Magister Lecture Series, was organized by the UP College of Law Constitutional Law Cluster and Justice George Malcolm Foundation Inc., in cooperation with the Integrated Bar of the Philippines Law Journal.
It’s fitting that the talk was held in a school that teaches law because Justice Carpio said the best way to defend the country’s sovereignty is through the rule of law.
As he has been doing for years now, the former Supreme Court associate justice once again laid down facts, pointed to ancient maps and discussed the three treaties that define Philippine territory:
The 1898 Treaty of Paris, which ceded to the United States the archipelago known as the Philippine Islands lying within the Paris Treaty lines;
The 1900 Treaty of Washington, which clarified that the cession included any and all islands belonging to the Philippine Archipelago, lying outside the lines of the 1898 Treaty of Paris; and
The 1930 Treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom demarcating the boundary between North Borneo and Southern Philippines, which defines the Philippine archipelago as the territory acquired by the US.
Recommendations
These treaties are as old as time and have long been used to define our territory.
Despite this, geopolitical disputes continue to hover like dark clouds above us, threatening a thunderstorm or an even worse catastrophe.
For Justice Carpio, one way to solve the issue is for the Philippines to invite China, Vietnam and Malaysia to submit the territorial dispute in the Spratlys to voluntary arbitration by the International Court of Justice.
Separately, he said, the Philippines should also invite China to submit the territorial dispute over Scarborough Shoal to voluntary arbitration by the International Court of Justice.
“This will finally settle by peaceful means, as mandated by the United Nations Charter, the territorial disputes in the Spratlys and Scarborough Shoal,” he said.
Rising sea levels
“If these other disputant states are not willing to submit the territorial dispute to arbitration, the Philippines can just wait for sea levels to rise to submerge most, if not all, of these islands. Then the submerged areas will form part of the Philippines EEZ (exclusive economic zone) if within 200 nautical miles from the archipelagic baselines of the Philippines. Beyond this Philippine EEZ, submerged areas will form part of Philippine ECS (extended continental shelf) up to the median line with the overlapping ECS of the opposite state,”Justice Carpio said.
What is the Philippine Archipelago?
At the end of his lecture, Justice Carpio reminded everyone what constitutes our beloved archipelago:
“The Philippine Archipelago, constituting Philippine national territory, are (1) all the islands constituting Philippine Archipelago lying within the lines of the 1898 Treaty of Paris; (2) all the islands of the Philippine Archipelago lying outside the lines of the Treaty of Paris as clarified in the 1900 Treaty of Washington and as shown in the 1734 Murillo Velarde map, the 1808 Carta General de Archipielago Filipino and the 1875 Carta General del Archipielago Filipino and (3) the 1930 US-UK Treaty demarcating the boundary between North Borneo and Southern Philippines.”
The lecture was extensive and informative and every Filipino should hear it. It is available in the UP College of Law’s Facebook Page.
Justice Carpio’s recommendations are worth trying; otherwise future generations may just have to wait for calmer times to resolve this.
But it can’t be just us. China must also fervently want this to be resolved in a peaceful manner, no violence or aggression.
AFP Chief of Staff General Romeo Brawner Jr. said these dangerous maneuvers endanger the lives of maritime personnel from both sides. Thus, he said, China must uphold maritime safety and adhere to rules-based international order.
Hopefully, this will be resolved peacefully, sooner than later.
In the meantime, I salute Justice Carpio for consistently defending our sovereignty and educating Filipinos that indeed, the West Philippine Sea is ours.
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Email: eyesgonzales@gmail.com. Follow her on Twitter @eyesgonzales. Column archives at EyesWideOpen (Iris Gonzales) on Facebook.