Scarborough Shoal

Ancient Maps. I' ll start with the fundamental questions why some cliffs and a small cliff named Bajo de Masinloc (Scarborough Shoal) are important for the Philippines. I will then show you the foundation and proof of Filipino supremacy over Bajo de Masinloc. I' ll show you that we have more proof and a better right to Bajo de Masinloc, despite China' s persistence in its demand.

Then I will try to put forward some suggestions to spark a serious and cheerful discussion about what the Philippines should do next with regard to our upcoming problems with China through Bajo de Masinloc. Bajo de Masinloc's importance for the Philippines. The hydrographs of the Coastal and Geodetic Surveying Department of the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority (NAMRIA) found this during a 1997 surveying missions.

During their several day stay in the area, they identified base points for the Filipino archipelago base system, which was implemented by RA 9522 in 2009. The Bajo de Masinloc is one of the oldest known fisheries in the Philippines, since its emergence as an autonomous national state.

Formerly known as Scarborough Shoal, the Commonwealth period map even contained Scarborough Shoal on the islands' marine life, particularly in its stock of benches. This is why Bajo de Masinloc is the focus of Filipino nationwide interests in issues of environment safety, nutritional safety and defence.

That is why the Philippines is very concerned about China's blocking of Bajo de Masinloc. The Chinese coastguard is present 24/7, preventing Filipino vessels from getting close to the swarm. By claiming it has the supremacy over the swarm it has called Huangyan Island, China is trying to defend its deeds.

The Embassy of the People's Republic of China released the foundation of its entitlement to Bajo de Masinloc through a commercial ad in the country's papers in April 2012. To summarize, China has the right to Bajo de Masinloc because it is the first to discover the isle, gave it its name and included it in its territories and has always exerted legal authority over it.

Regarding the assertion of the first finding, China claims that during the Yuan Empire in the thirteenth cent. However, the Yuan family was a strange kingdom, founded by Kublai Khan, and China was then only part of the great Mongolian empire. When Bajo de Masinloc was actually purchased by means of discoveries, this discoveries could only be made in the name of the ruler, the Mongolian Empire.

Maybe it should therefore be used by the rest of the Mongolian empire, Mongolia, and not China. In the Dong Han Hai Yi Tu (barbarian lands of the southeast) painted by Lo Hsung-Hsien in the fifteenth centuary, again on the basis of cards of the Yuan dynasty, the Philippines appear as small blocks with marks for May-i (Mindoro) and Sansu (probably Calamian, Palawan and Busuanga).

Reviewing these cards of China on the basis of information from the Yuan Dynasty quickly draws certain inferences. In fact, China had very little information about the Philippines and its major isles, in position, magnitude or form, during the yuan-era. In comparison to Japan, Taiwan and Hainan, the Philippines did not even have much importance for them.

Secondly, China did not seem to have complete and precise information on the major isles of our island by then. When it could not even define the position, height or form of Luzon, then it could much less easily recognize the infinite simal cliffs and the Bajo de Masinloc is. At this point China cannot say to be discovered, as information from the era itself is not binding.

The Filipino ancestry had already made contacts with China in the seventh and tenth centuries under the Tang Dynasty 700 years before the Yuan. China knew very well that the Philippines was populated by seafarers. It was the Filipino forefathers, not the Chineses, who ruled the South East Asiatic oceans.

This ports policy flourished at a moment when China was withdrawing into itself and abandoning external commerce. The viability of this trafficking prompted China merchants to engage in lobbying with their secluded governments to facilitate trading operations to and from Southeast Asia, and this ultimately borne fruits.

So if the Yuan Dynasty sailors ever came to the Philippines or any part of it, it was because they knew that our forefathers were already there. Concerning the second foundation of their assertion, it should be noted that the name "Huangyan Island" was only on the China charts of the South China Sea around 1983.

It is reported to appear for the first case on the 1935 South China Sea chart and is reported ly as one of the water mapping committee's nine dotted line maps in the initial 9-line chart, which is now notorious. Originally, the card (with 11 dotted lines) gave the riff the name Scarborough.

It is clear proof that China did not even know about the swarm in 1947 and only learned about it from the British admiralty maps. Bajo de Masinloc was not given a unique name in China until it was re-named Minzhu Reef. However, the issue is that it is part of the Nansha Qundao or the Spratly Islands.

Spratlys are a unique group of archipelagos about 260 sea-mile from Bajo de Masinloc. It was not until 1983, almost 40 years later, after sending its first hydrographical study to the area without notifying the Philippines, that China named the place Huangyan Island. It' s sensible to assume that the name and grouping changes were a straightforward outcome of this recent investigation; and that it was not until 1977 that China actually arrived at Bajo de Masinloc and realised that it could be more than one might.

It is the only characteristic above the sea in the Zhongshe Qundao, which is said to lie between the Paracels and the Philippines. When the site of what China now refers to as Huangyan Iceland was not even known and established until 1983, it becomes clear that the right to continued judicial practice is unfounded.

Huangyan Island was not created for China until 1983 and was only one point on the country's roadmaps. Her only attempt to pursue any kind of judicial authority over Bajo de Masinloc was in 1994, when she gave permission to an ham band transmitter to establish an ham band on the swarm, which sparked today's controversy.

Similarly, we can now look at the foundation and type of the Philippines' right to Bajo de Masinloc by highlighting not only the tangible weakness of China's demands, but also the greater foundation and proof of Filipino swarm independence and judiciary. The review of official acts shows that Filipino supremacy over Bajo de Masinloc is unequivocally certain.

There is the inescapable result of a trial of consolidating the judiciary through actions a title de sourceverain, practiced over a particular place beginning during the colonization of Spain and continually practiced up to the present age. These files date the unknown assertion of China, which can be assumed at the earliest in 1947, when the Republic of China drawn the initial 11 dotted line and thus included Bajo de Masinloc.

The exhibition by Justice Carpio shows that old China charts tend to disregard countries off the China coast: old China map makers did not show many details beyond the few titles that only affected the biggest Philippine isles like May-i. These deficiencies in detail are in contradiction to the map of the Philippines and Southeast Asia, since the geographical awareness of the area in the seventeenth cent.

The Bajo de Masinloc appeared as an untitled coral that was clearly associated with the Isle of Luzon, often almost like a spot called "Punto de Mandato" (point of mandate). It is important that Bajo de Masinloc is intimately connected to the Filipino Islands from the very beginning.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, reef charts of Southeast Asia and the Philippines showed three different coral corals just east of Luzon, which were soon named in the famed 1734 Murillo Velarde chart of the Filipino Islands. You also bought other reputations like Bajo de Bolinao, Bajo de Masinloc and Bajo de Miravela.

In other cards Bajo de Masinloc was also known as Maroona or South Maroona. However, the inaccurate location of the three coral corals would soon be solved, starting with the landing of a UK sailboat, the HMS Scarborough, which was hired by the East India Company to carry tee between China and Britain's East Indies.

At the 12th of September 1748 the vessel ran aground on Bajo de Masinloc. Captains logs describe the near-trage of the HMS Scarborough: Earthing the HMS Scarborough was a very important cartographical incident, as the charts released after that time were soon commented on with the accident. There was some insecurity about whether it was actually on the Panacot or South Maroona coral-reefs, and some charts showed it to be a completely different site called "Scarborough Shoal".

" Though there was a first discussion about which riff the HMS Scarborough hit, it was finally suspected that it could only have been Panacot or Bajo de Masinloc (or South Maroona / Marsingola, as some UK charts used to call it). There would be several decade-long debates before the Scarborough Shoal co-ordinates could be established.

The Malaspina Express, a great science enterprise of that period, traveled through the South China Sea in May 1792 and was able to determine the precise location of the Scarborough Shoal. It also confirmed that the other two coral corals indicated in earlier charts did not existed, and all these marks could only refer to Scarborough Shoal.

On March 13 and 18, 1866, a more in-depth investigation was carried out by Master & Commander Edward Wilds at the steam-driven HMS Swallow ship. Thus, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Galit and Lumbay no longer appear on public map, while Panacot or Bajo de Masinloc were given the name under which they became world-famous: Bajo de Masinloc:

This is Scarborough Shoal. The Spanish began to pursue the law of searching and rescuing the swarm and supported distressed boats by shipping them from Manila. It is very important that Spain has started to exercise justice at this stage. At the end of the last millennium, the Philippines was transferred to the United States by two assignment agreements.

Whereas the Treaty of Paris of 1898 described the Philippine Isles as all of them within an uneven tract, Spain also had authority and justice over them. Those archipelagos and towns were also brought to the United States under the Washington Treaty of 1900.

Thus, the US Colonization Administration continues to intermittently administer the swarm of vessels, in particular by rescuing and recovering vessels in difficulty at sea. A very well recorded incident took place in 1913, when the S.S. Nippon, a swarming S. S. Nippon, a swarming S. S. Nippon steamship with a precious load of coppers, was destroyed by a Typhoon when the vessel sailed from Manila to Hong Kong.

This wreck demonstrates the practice of a number of naval jurisdictions: the ship's personnel were saved, the event was formally examined by the Philippines Naval Administration, the vessel was subject to recovery laws in the Philippines and an offical science survey was carried out on the impact of the ocean on the ship's payload.

This incident is documented in the case of Erlanger & Galinger v. The Swedish East Asiatic Co, GR No. L-10051, a case that went as far as the Supreme Court of the Philippines in 1916. A number of vessels, both public and privately owned, took part in the drill and the controversy concerned shipowners, freight operators, salvage agents and underwriters.

After the rescue of the whole team, the vessel and its load had to be left on the swarm and are thus subjected to the recovery regulations. The Supreme Court, in clarifying the case, considered all the important details of the incident and thus recorded proof of its practice by the Philippines in various courts.

These facts and the case itself show the free and complete exercising of power by the Philippines and the Filipino law's enforcement of swarming activity. Rescuing the ship's personnel is also mentioned in the notes of the US Coast and Geodetic Survey, which sent three cutter, a show and the cable ship Rizal to recover the S.S. Nippon for several sittings.

It was forwarded to the US authorities as part of the Governor General's Reporto. Intergovernmental management is also evident in the exercising of investigatory authority over the event, as stated in the Bureau of Navigation Bureau records of the British Empire. Bureau of Science even carried out research on the fuselage to monitor the impact of the ocean on the load of coppra while the vessel was still in the swarm.

Results have been reported in the Philippines Government's formal science magazine. Other proofs show the consolidating of justice and swarm supremacy. The Scarborough Shoal is included in the Philippines Cadastre of the Philippines, compiled by the U.S. Colony Administration and included in the 1918 Census of the Philippines.

The Commonwealth government directly addressed the issue of swarm supremacy a few years later. Mr. Wayne Coy of the Office of the US High Commissioner for the Philippines specifically asked Captain Thomas Maher, Director of the US Coastal and Geodesy Survey, on December 6, 1937, whether Scarborough Shoal had been used by any state.

Captain Maher answered on 10 December 1937 that there was no information as to whether any country, the British included, had claimed swarm supremacy. Its Bureau had no authority to rule on the matter of independence, but found that there was information from earlier Hispanic and other notes, in particular the uprising of Santa Lucia in 1800.

Capt. Maher also said Captain Maher continued to propose a new measurement of the swarm and the fitting of a steering beacon. The interest in the swarm's formal assertion continued in the following few month, Jorge B. Vargas then contacting Mr. Couy to enquire about Scarborough Shoal's state. Afterwards, Acting Marine Secretary W.R. Furlong sent a letter to Acting Secretary of War Louis Johnson: "It is noted that the Commonwealth Government of the Philippines intends to explore the potential of this riff, particularly with regard to its value as an assistance to ATC and with the option of asserting its claim later if there are no objections from the United States Government to this operation.

On 19 October 1938, Trade Minister Paul Frizzell sent a letter to the War Minister: "It is stated that the Philippine Commonwealth government wants to investigate the value of Scarborough Shoal as an instrument for providing flight safety, with the option of later claims to the name. The Foreign Minister will not raise any objections to the Commonwealth Government's suggestion, unless the Navy and Trade Ministries raise objections.

These letters confirm the competence of the Philippines under the Commonwealth government and lay the foundation for the effective exercising of independence later in the year. Obviously, the United States purchased the swarm of Spain under the Treaty of Washington of 1900 and therefore had no objections to its transfer to the Commonwealth.

Throughout the entire Commonwealth period, the Philippine government had always viewed Scarborough Shoal under its sole control, emphasizing it clearly on the Commonwealth map and continually practicing a particularly marine judiciary over the swarm. The Coast Pilot Guides of the US Coast and Geodetic Survey and the swarm of helicopters are proof of this.

Bajo de Masinloc remained under his rule after the foundation of the Republic of the Philippines in 1946, which actually increased in strength. 1961 the Philippine Coastal and Geodetic Surveying sent a hydrographical and topographical surveying crew under the leadership of Lieutenant Commander Antonio P. Ventura to the swarm.

During four outings they mapped and explored the swarm to create a detailled map of Bajo de Masinloc and its surroundings. In 1963, two years later, the newspaper reports about the salvation of the garrison of the French ship Arsineo, which had been wrecked in the swarm. It was just one of many wrecks in the whole story.

Philippine Coastal and Geodetic Surveying was used to mark these wrecks on the sea maps, and previous releases of the 4200 chart (which contains the full chart of the archipelago) clearly displayed both ship wrecks and navigation candles on the shoal. 1963 was also an important example of the exertion of total supremacy when the Philippine Navy found the basis of a swarm of smugglers.

Filipino Navy sent vessels to bomb the shipyard twice in the same time. There is no other state act that can articulate supremacy as fully and persuasively as this forced demolition of these illicit institutions. To prevent the restoration of the smugglers' home bases and to keep the Navy present around the swarm, the Philippines permitted the creation of a US Navy operating area that covers a 20-miles' outreach.

That made Scarborough Shoal a destination and bomb site for the Philippines and the US Navy. This fact has been communicated to the whole planet by the Coast Pilot Guides, published by the Philippine Coast and Geodetic Survey on a regular basis. The Notice to Mariners of the Philippine coast and the Geodetic Survey and the Philippine Navy, which warned all vessels of the possibility of live fire drills, included a US Navy rocket launch from Subic Bay in the early 80s, demonstrated total supremacy well into the 70s and 80s.

These were all continuous and peaceful and openly carried out without protests from any countries, up to 1995 and even in the summers of 1997, when the Coast and Geodetic Survey Division of NAMRIA carried out a depth mapping as part of its efforts to locate points to be used to establish the basic archelagic system under UNCLOS.

Thus it becomes clear that, against China's persistence, it was not the Philippines that only in the 1990' with the granting of a licence to ham radios for the construction and operation of an ham stations in the Philippines asserted a right to Bajo de Masinloc/Scarborough Shoal. Immediately the Philippines immediately objected to the event and took out the wireless transmitter.

That is the episode that triggered the Philippine-Chinese battle over Bajo de Masinloc, which flared up again in 2002 and culminated in China's shallow waters in 2012. Only in the 1990' s China actually and clearly used the swarm, and only in 2012 did it actually (albeit illegally) assert and exercise some kind of judicial system.

This less known historic fact surpasses the recently released notion that China has been using to warrant its present blocking of Bajo de Masinloc/Scarborough Shoal. The Justice Carpio card exhibition is indeed an important and contemporary criticism of China's claim and is supplemented by the historic note, which also clearly endorses the Philippines' swarm independence and courts.

The Scarborough Shoal is an integrated part of the Filipino Islands, purchased and integrated through a continuous chain of actions à titré de sovverain, which began in the colonization of Spain and lasted and strengthened throughout the colonization of America and was fully sovereign until the country's transformation from the Commonwealth to the IPR. The Scarborough Shoal is an important part of the Filipino Islands.

As early as the sixties, total independence was exerted and very clearly, perceptibly, frankly and in public demonstrations, excluding all other countries in the area, even China. Firstly, the Paris Treaty of 1898 and the Washington Treaty of 1900 are of great importance not only for the Philippines but also for the United States, to which the Republic of the Philippines has given legal supremacy over all prerogatives and jurisdiction over the territory of the Islands.

For the Americans in the 1930' it seems that Spain had a "title or entitlement to title" over Bajo de Masinloc/Scarborough Shoal, which was purchased by the United States, which in turn considered the transition to the Commonwealth of the Philippines appropriate. It is clear from the letters between Commonwealth officers and the US State Departments that the Commonwealth will acquire the swarm and the US will agree to this when it is incorporated into the Washington Treaty of 1900.

The Philippines had therefore exercised sole jurisdictional power over the swarm under Spain since at least the nineteenth and extended it under the United States and as an autonomous country in the twentieth centuries. This did not begin in 1946 with the practice of justice, but continued the practice of already existent courts, which ripened into full independence.

Our constitutions list Scarborough Shoal as one of the areas "over which the government of the Philippines exerts jurisdiction" (Constitution of 1935), then "under historical law or title" (Constitution of 1973) and then "all other areas over which the Philippines have authority or jurisdiction" (Constitution of 1987). Secondly, if Bajo de Masinloc/Scarborough Shoal was indeed admitted as part of the Philippines Republic of the Philippines as part of the United States' transfer of the Philippines, then it is probably the Philippines islands that are under US defence obligations under the Philippines-US Mutual Defence Treaty.

That is important given China's main means of asserting its claim against the South China Sea today: through the use of its slightly-armoured but large coastguard boats against overseas boats and, more recently, through recultivation measures. In the present situation, the only thing that can prevent a" there has not yet been an assault.... on the islands under their Pacific Ocean jurisdictions, their military powers, government owned boats or planes in the Pacific Ocean" under the provisions of the MDT is that there can be legally binding obligations under the MDT.

If, as this year, China were to use its ships in aggressive operations with Vietnam and hit or scupper Filipino ships, it could be qualified as an assault by force that would meet the US defence obligations under Articles IV and F of the MDT. Trying to build or recultivate a Bajo de Masinloc/Scarborough Shoal base to turn it into an artifical islet would mean nothing less than the continued occupation of part of the Philippines and would therefore pose a immediate danger to the country's regional sovereignty.

If the Philippines were to send official boats to hinder or hinder such withdrawals, they would be fully justifiable. If, like Vietnam, China then reacts to the HS 981 offshore platform by using a protecting navy of boats to jam and hit such Filipino boats, it faces the risk of an outside gun strike while actually taking the swarm.

China's persistent Bajo de Masinloc/Scarborough Shoal embargo thus passes a very delicate and hazardous line; it has crossed the border so far that only a single error will classify its action as an MDT offensive. What needs to be asked and seriously examined now is whether and how the Philippine government is prepared for these scenes and eventualities.

Third point: The battle over Bajo de Masinloc/Scarborough Shoal does not only affect the few small cliffs on the shore. Following the Philippines' submission for arbitrations, any stone is able to produce a full 12 miles of territorial lake. So the Philippines must be willing to follow their interest in the swarm not only through legal disputes, but by any other means available.

Not only the arbitral procedure itself, but also the Philippines as a whole and the actual situation at Sea. It is imperative that the Philippines continue the arbitral procedure, as they are fully dedicated to the procedure. At the same avenue, however, it must also keep open the possibility of dealing with the other forms of the conflict over the Western Philippine Seas which are not already included in its case.

The Philippines would be well placed to be prepared to pursue its interests on all front lines and with all available instruments in the near term and beyond.