Friday, May 11, 2012

"Scarborough Shoal" Disputed Territory

Scarborough Shoal (also known as Scarborough Reef/Panatag Shoal/Huangyan Island/Minzhu Jiao/Bajo de Masinloc) - Geographically situated not too far from the also-contested Spratly Island and Paracel Islands, this mound of sand has similar sovereignty issues to it's more well-known neighbours. The Philippines controls and runs this group, but China (People's Republic of China) lays claim to it, as part of it's Paracels, Spratlys, and Zhongsha Islands Authority, and Taiwan (Republic of China) expresses sovereignty too, in the context of being the 'true ruler of China'. Fishing is important in this part of the ocean, and this is probably the main reason for such a high demand on an circumspect isolated bunch of small low-lying islands and reefs.

Scarborough Shoal or Scarborough Reef:  (Chinese name: Huangyan Island, Philippine name: Panatag Shoal, Bajo de Masinloc). , more correctly described as a group of islands and reefs in an atoll shape than a shoal, is located between the Macclesfield Bank and Luzon Island of the Philippines in the South China Sea.



The shoal was named after a tea-trade ship Scarborough which was wrecked on the rock with everyone perishing on board in the late 18th century.



Geography
The shoal forms a triangle-shaped chain of reefs and islands (but mostly rocks) 55 kilometres (34 mi) around with an of area 150 square kilometers. It has a lagoon with area of 130 km² and depth of about 15 metres (49 ft). The shoal is a protrusion from a 3,500 m deep abyssal plain. Several of the islands including "South Rock" are 1/2 m to 3 m high and many of the reefs are just below water at high tide. Near the mouth of the lagoon are the ruins of an iron tower, 8.3 m high. To the east, the 5,000 - 6,000 meter deep Manila Trench separates the shoal from the Philippine archipelago.
It is about 123 miles (198 km) west of Subic Bay. The nearest landmass is Palauig, Zambales, on Luzon Island in the Philippines, 137 miles (220 km) away.

Activities in the Surrounding Area
The shoal and its surrounding area are rich fishing grounds. A significant number of Chinese fishermen have been arrested by Philippine officials in this area, particularly during 1998-2001. Most arrests were for alleged using illegal methods of fishing and catching endangered and protected species.
There are thick layers of guano lying on the rocks in the area. Several Filipino-sponsored and Chinese-sponsored diving excursions and amateur ham radio operations, DXpeditions (1994, 1995, 1997 and 2007), have been carried out in the area.

Sovereignty Dispute
The People’s Republic of China and Republic of China (Taiwan)

Map depicting China's territory in South China Sea, by Ministry of the Interior, ROC, 1947

The People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan) claim that the shoal was first discovered and drawn in a map in the Yuan Dynasty as early as 1279 and was historically used by Chinese fishermen. In 1279, Guo Shoujing, a Chinese astronomer, performed surveying of the South China Sea, and the surveying point was reported to be the Scarborough Shoal. In 1935, China regarded the shoal as part of the Zhongsha Islands. In 1947, the shoal was given the name Minzhu Jiao. In 1983, it was renamed Huangyan Island with Minzhu Jiao reserved as a second name. In 1956, China protested Philippine remarks that South China Sea islands in close proximity to Philippine territory should belong to the Philippines. China's Declaration on the territorial Sea, promulgated in 1958, says in part,

The breadth of the Territorial Sea of the People's Republic of China shall be twelve nautical miles. This applies to all territories of the People's Republic of China, including the Chinese mainland and its coastal islands, as well as Taiwan and its surrounding islands, the Penghu Islands, the Dongsha Islands, the Xisha Islands, the Zhongsha Islands [italics added], the Nansha Islands and all other islands belonging to China which are separated from the mainland and its coastal islands by the high seas.

China reaffirmed its claim of sovereignty over the Zhongsha Islands in its 1992 Law on the territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone. China claims all the islands, reefs, and shoals within a U-shaped line in the South China Sea drawn in 1947 as its territory. Scarborough shoal lies within this area.

China further asserted its claim shortly after the departure of the US Navy force from Subic, Zambales, Philippines. In the late 1970s, many scientific expedition activities organized by State Bureau of Surveying, National Earthquake Bureau and National Bureau of Oceanography were held in the shoal and around this area. In 1980, a stone marker reading "South China Sea Scientific Expedition" was installed on the South Rock, but was removed by Philippines in 1997.

The Philippine government has proposed taking the Panatag issue to the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea, but the Chinese government has rejected this, insisting on bilateral discussions.

The Philippines

  
Territorial map claimed by the Philippines (not fully acknowledged by other countries)

The Philippines claims that as early as the Spanish colonization of the Philippines, Filipino fishermen were already using the area as a traditional fishing ground and shelter during bad weather. In 1957, The Philippine government conducted an oceanographic survey of the area and together with the US Navy force based in then U.S. Naval Base Subic Bay in Zambales, used the area as an impact range for defense purposes. An 8.3 meter high flag pole flying a Philippine flag was raised in 1965. A small lighthouse was also built and operated the same year. In 1992, the Philippine Navy rehabilitated the lighthouse and reported it to the International Maritime Organization for publication in the List of Lights. As of 2009, the military-maintained lighthouse is non-operational.

Several official Philippine maps published by Spain and United States in 18th and 20th centuries show Scarborough Shoal as Philippine territory. The 18th-century map "Carta hydrographica y chorographica de las Islas Filipinas" (1734) shows the Scarborough Shoal then was named as Panacot Shoal. The map also shows the shape of the shoal as consistent with the current maps available as today. During the 1900s Mapa General. Islas Filipinas, Observatorio de Manila and US Coast and Geodetic Survey Map includes the Scarborough Shoal named as "Baju De Masinloc".In 1792, another map drawn by the Malaspina expedition and published in 1808 in Madrid, Spain also showed Bajo de Masinloc as part of Philippine territory. The map showed the route of the Malaspina expedition to and around the shoal. It was reproduced in the Atlas of the 1939 Philippine Census, which was published in Manila a year later and predates the controversial 1947 Chinese South China Sea Claim Map that shows no chinese name on it .Another topographic map drawn in 1820 shows the shoal, named there as "Bajo Scarburo", as a constituent part of Sambalez (Zambales province).

The Scarborough Shoal is not included within the territorial lines defined in the Treaty of Paris (1898) between the United States, Treaty of Washington (1900) between Spain and the United States,Convention Between the United States and Great Britain (1930), 1935 Constitution of the Philippines, Republic Act No. 3046 "Act to Define the Baselines of the Territorial Sea of the Philippines"(1961), or the 1987 Constitution of the Philippines. The Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) asserts that the basis of Philippine sovereignty and jurisdiction over the rock features of Bajo de Masinloc is not premised on the cession by Spain of the Philippine archipelago to the United States under the Treaty of Paris, and argues that the matter that the rock features of Bajo de Masinloc are not included or within the limits of the Treaty of Paris as alleged by China is therefore immaterial and of no consequence.

The Philippines bases its claim on the principle of terra nullius, which holds that it was previously unclaimed by a sovereign state, which is also applied by the Philippines in its claims to the Spratly Islands. By virtue of the Presidential Decree No. 1599 issued by President Ferdinand Marcos on June 1978, the Philippines claims an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) up to 200 nautical miles (370 km) from the baselines from which their territorial sea is measured.In 2009, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo enacted the Philippine Baselines Law of 2009 (RA 9522). The new law classifies the Spratly Islands and the Scarborough Shoal as a regime of islands under the Republic of the Philippines.

The DFA further cites the Island of Palmas Case, where the sovereignty of the island was adjudged in favor of the Netherlands because of effective jurisdiction and control despite the historic claim of Spain. The Philippines has exercised effective jurisdiction and effective occupation of the shoal since its independence. It also explains that the Exclusive Economic Zone claim on the waters around Scarborough is different from the sovereignty exercised by the Philippines in the shoal.

China's naval intrusion to the Philippine territory since Saturday April 7, 2012 in the Scarborough Shoal / or also called Panatag Shoal is a follow-up to its recent forays into Philippine western territorial waters. It is the fifth times where China Intruded the Philippine Territory since June 2011.

China has confronted Philippine military and civilian vessels in the following places:
  1. Recto Bank
  2. Rajah Soliman Reef
  3. Quirino Atoll
  4. Escoda Shoal.
  5. The recent is the Panatag Shoal / Scarborough Shoal.
All four lie a few dozen kilometers off Palawan but 2,000 km from China's nearest island-province of Hainan; Scarborough is 220 km off Zambales but more than 800 km from Hong Kong. China's pretext of protecting its fishermen and seismic surveyors is not unique. As in the last two decades, it trespasses into Philippine offshore oilfields and abets fish poaching to prop up a shaky counterclaim over the West Philippine (South China) Sea.


Source: Wikipedia





  

 

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