SCARBOROUGH Shoal – also known to us as Panatag and Bajo de Masinloc – keeps popping up in news about disputes and conflicts in the South China Sea.
It is a group of reefs and rocks around a lagoon, a rich fishing area long frequented by fishermen from many nations. China claims the shoal by virtue of a 1279 Yuan Dynasty map. The Philippines claims it with a 1734 map showing it under the sovereignty of Spanish Philippines. In 1949, China produced a map claiming as its territory 80 percent of the South China Sea enclosed by a nine-dash line, with Scarborough within the area enclosed by the easternmost line.
In 2012, Philippine and Chinese ships confronted each other in the area and the United States mediated, asking both sides to withdraw. The Philippine ships did, but the Chinese did not. This led to the filing of the Philippine complaint in the Arbitral Court in The Hague on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The court ruled in 2016 that China’s claim to most of the South China Sea has no legal basis, but the court did not rule on the other nations’ claims. As for Scarborough, the court said, it is a traditional fishing ground that should remain open to the fishermen of various nations.
Scarborough is located 221 kilometers west of Palauig, Zambales; it is thus with the 200-mile “Exclusive Economic Zone” (EEZ) of the Philippines under the UNCLOS. But the EEZ waters are not Philippine territory. What UNCLOS conferred was the exclusive right to exploit any resources, possibly oil or gas, in the land beneath the sea.
Last week, Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio expressed fears that China may act in the final three years of the Duterte administration to take over Scarborough, just before an agreement on a Code of Conduct is made with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Malacañang, through presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo, quickly responded that President Duterte will not allow this to happen. Then Chinese Ambassador Zhao Jianhua joined in with the statement that “we do not need to reclaim it.”
Thus, after a new round of opinions and beliefs, charges and replies, we are back to the original situation of uncertainty. Both China and the Philippines claim it. Both have old maps supporting their claims. We should have a stronger claim because the shoal is so much closer to our shores, but the legal issue of ownership remains undecided to this day.
We claim it. China also claims it. Under UNCLOS, we have the right to the resources of the land beneath our EEZ. But the waters in the EEZ are deemed international waters, open to international navigation, which is the main concern of the US as it keeps sending its warships into the South China Sea.
China and the Philippines have both shown diplomatic sobriety in this latest exchange of claims and comments. Hopefully, one day, our two nations will come to some definite agreement, officially stated in a treaty, that will put an end to this centuries-old dispute between our two nations.
