Editorial

Sovereign authority

Territorial and maritime disputes in the Philippine-held features in the Spratlys islands over China’s occupation and militarization has once more gained the attention of Filipinos and media outlets after an incident involving Chiara Zambrano, an ABS-CBN reporter, along with some crew and boat operator, who were prevented by Chinese ships while traversing the West Philippine Sea heading to Ayungin Shoal. Reports said that Zambrano noticed a white ship of the Chinese Coast Guard coming in their direction while in an area four miles from the entrance of the said shoal. A radio message was relayed to them but the boat operator decided to return to the mainland since the message was in English and he was unable to respond. While on their way back, the spotted Chinese vessel accelerated and chased the Filipino boat for an hour. After the chase, two smaller and faster vessels resumed, and afterwards two missile boats emerged. All these happened just 90 nautical miles from Palawan – clearly within the Philippine borders.

Despite the ongoing call to demand from the Chinese government to halt operations in the Spratlys islands, it is known that the dispute has been resolved already with finality by the Hague arbitral tribunal in the South China Sea Arbitration. With the victory, the country has to initiate an invitation to states included in the dispute such as Vietnam, China, Malaysia, and Brunei, to come up with a binding voluntary arbitration before the International Court of Justice.

According to an opinion article written by retired Supreme Court Justice Antonio T. Carpio, the bases for winning the case over territorial and maritime disputes are firm and facts-driven. First, he mentioned that the country has the oldest documentary evidence of sovereignty over the Spratlys – the 1734 Murillo Velarde map – which dated back since the Spanish colonial regime, where the islands were called Los Bajos de Paragua. Second, under the Treaty of Paris, as amended by the 1900 Treaty of Washington, the said islands belong to the Philippine archipelago, after Spain ceded its ownership to the United States. This is supported by the third claim where “the international law doctrine of uti possidetis, the boundaries of colonies are sacrosanct and could not be changed to the prejudice of the independent states that emerged from those colonies”. Therefore, Spratlys cannot be detached from the Philippines since the Spratlys were part of Philippine territory during the Spanish and American colonial regimes. Fourth, another map made by Nicolas Sanson, Royal Cartographer of King Louis XIII of France, clearly shows that the Spratlys is part of the Philippine territory. Fifth, China can no longer use the notorious nine-dash line to claim the Spratlys due to the fact that these lines have no legal or factual bases in the South China Sea Arbitration. These evidences hold the country’s power over its maritime and land territories.

Such sovereign authority gives the country, a developing nation, the full capacity to harness and maximize the use of its resources through research and development. Such sovereign power provides the country immunity from any form of intimidation and threat from foreign incursions. Such sovereign power can give the country’s local fishermen freedom to fish and harvest maritime resources, without the fear of missile boats and blaring radio messages from highly-armed Chinese coast guards demanding Filipino fishermen to return to the shore – silent and helpless. 

But, the question remains, who will break the silence and helplessness?