RETIRED Associate Justice Antonio Carpio flatly dismissed Monday China’s claims that it owns the West Philippine Sea (WPS), as well as the whole South China Sea since ancient times. This, as former Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario cited computations showing China, in fact, owes the Philippines P33 billion a year in damage to Philippine marine resources in the WPS, or a total of P200 billion since 2014.
“This is totally false,” Carpio said at a webinar hosted by Sen. Risa Hontiveros. “I call this the fake history…. This historical claim by China has been ruled by the arbitral tribunal as without legal or factual basis. The tribunal said that there is no evidence that China controlled the entire South China Sea at any time in its history beyond its territorial seas.”
He said “all the important maps of China from the Tang dynasty to the Ching dynasty which ended in 1912, all these important maps of China were published in a 2-volume Atlas of Ancient Maps by the People’s Republic of China in the 1990s and all these ancient maps showed without exception that the southernmost territory of China was Hainan Island.”
He added: “Without doubt, China’s own official maps since almost 1,000 years ago show that Hainan Island was their southernmost territory.”
It was only in 1932, Carpio stressed, “that China officially claimed the Paracel Islands, it was only in 1946 that China officially claimed the Spratlys.”
In 1943, he said, China published the China Handbook to include the Paracels but China did not claim the Spratlys as part of its territory in this 1943 handbook. In 1946, China revised the China Handbook and for the first time in China’s history, China claimed the Spratlys but only starting 1946. However in this China Handbook, China said that the Spratlys was also claimed by the Philippines and the French who were then in Vietnam.
Asked by Hontiveros about China’s strategic end-goal, del Rosario replied: “The answer to your first question, is that China wants complete control and domination of the South China Sea, and I think we all know what this is about, it is about feeding its people, it is about fueling their economy, and it is about strengthening their military. Those are the reasons for China to seek total domination of the South China Sea.”
Citing the Hontiveros resolution filed in the Senate, del Rosario noted its provisions that China has been causing great damage, maritime losses, to the Philippines, as part of its maritime designs, its ability to move forward on its strategy in the South China Sea.
“I have come up with some notes here actually,” del Rosario said, adding: “This week as we celebrate June 12 or Independence Day, we Filipinos should continue to stand up for our rights.
China does not see us as having equal rights. China is simply a duplicitous friend that continues its construction of artificial islands and structures in our West Philippine Sea. China to date refuses to recognize what the international community recognizes: that our nation and we Filipinos litigated our rights amid China’s abuses and violations in the West Philippine Sea,” securing the arbitration award on July 12, 2016. “Part of this award is the unanimous finding that China inflicted the most massive, near-permanent damage to marine life in the West Philippine Sea. In other words, China is enormously accountable and owes Filipinos billions of pesos for its continuing abuses in the West Philippine Sea.”
Del Rosario added that more than half of the country’s 110 million Filipinos live in coastal communities, relying on marine resources for their daily needs. “And as highlighted by Justice Carpio and Senator Hontiveros, our country’s best and and brightest scientists at the University of the Philipines [UP] Marine Science Institute conservatively estimated that our country is conservatively losing P33 billion a year in damage to our marine ecosystems due to China’s artificial island building and fishing operations. This sums up to more than P200 billion since the start of 2014,” he added.
The ex-DFA chief lamented, however, that China refuses to pay its debt to the Filipino people. “How will we make China pay? It is time for Filipinos to unite and demand what is due to us from China. Philippine authorities have the right to seize assets owned by the Chinese state here in the Philippines to satisfy China’s debt to the Filipino people once China’s full monetary damages are determined.”
In del Rosario’s view, it is also time for the Philippines to protect itself from “China’s predatory and abusive practices.” He added that ‘despite China’s clear disrespect of our internationally recognized rights over our territory, our fishermen and our people, our government welcomes China while other countries like the Australia, India, the US, Japan the European Union recently enacted measures to prevent China from taking over their strategic and vital industries like energy, technology and media and telecommunications.”
Image credits: AP/Bullit Marquez
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