Scarborough Shoal, 4 forgotten maps and Antonio Carpio

Here we are again, back to 2012, when Chinese vessels stared down and outnumbered Philippine boats in weeks of a tense standoff at the Scarborough Shoal. It ended badly for us: We lost control of the shoal. 

Since then, China’s massive maritime forces, the Coast Guard and PLA Navy, have called the shots in a feature within the Philippines Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

The shoal, also known as Bajo de Masinloc (BDM), is only 119 nautical miles or 220 kilometers from the coast of Zambales while it is a hugely distant 500 nautical miles or 920 kilometers from Hainan, the southernmost province of China.

Today, we are witnessing sort of a reprise, with the appearance of Chinese floating structures  within the Scarborough Shoal, and are kept in suspense over what their end game is. This latest episode began on May 25 when the Philippines, through satellite imagery,  spotted what looked like a square shiny metallic object at an entrance to the shoal. This turned out to be a 6 by 6-meter moveable platform with an antenna. A close-up of the image showed that it had a 30-square meter deck surrounded by fenders and supported by metal stilts.

Six Chinese personnel were on the platform, as monitored by the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), and they may have helped move the structure which was later seen inside the shoal on May 31. PCG spokesman for the West Philippine Sea Jay Tarriela said he suspects the two Chinese research vessels seen at the shoal were responsible for putting it there. Buoys were also seen in the area.

All these appear to fall within China’s plan to establish a nature reserve in Scarborough Shoal. So far, Tarriela said, it looks like China is on a research mission.

China hauled out the moveable platform after three weeks, saying they had completed their mission. 

But it’s not as benign as it seems. As Undersecretary Alexander Lopez of the National Maritime Council said, the “nightmare of Mischief Reef” still haunts people’s memories. (In 1995, China seized Mischief Reef by first building fishermen’s huts and eventually transforming it into a heavily fortified military base.)

The facts

With all eyes now on Scarborough Shoal, let’s revisit the following facts:

• The Philippines enjoys sovereign rights over the shoal as part of its EEZ.
• The 2016 Arbitral Award declared Scarborough Shoal a traditional fishing ground for Filipinos, Chinese and Vietnamese.
• The international arbitration tribunal classified the shoal as a high-tide feature, thus it generates only a 12-nautical-mile territorial sea and does not grant China an EEZ.
• The tribunal did not rule that the shoal lies within Philippine territory because it doesn’t have the jurisdiction to do so.
• To settle the territorial dispute (the international arbitral court ruled only on the maritime dispute), China has to voluntarily agree to submit itself to arbitration, together with a claimant country like the Philippines, to the International Court of Justice. Another option, according to former Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio, is for Manila and Beijing to submit the territorial dispute to a third party arbiter or panel of arbiters mutually chosen by both countries.

Enter the four maps

It is highly unlikely that Beijing will agree to either of these processes. As a regional hegemon, it relies on its might, not the rule of law, to buttress its unilateral claim.

Manila, for its part, has a strong evidence-based claim, thanks to Carpio’s historical sleuthing. He has unearthed four forgotten maps, buried in our history, that define our country’s territory, long before China super-imposed nine dashes over most of the South China Sea.

These maps are available for the public to see at the National Library, donated by Carpio and businessman Mel Velarde.

1. The 1734 Murillo Velarde Map, the earliest of these maps, was created by Spanish Jesuit priest Pedro Murillo Velarde. It detailed the archipelago’s features, including Panacot Island, also known as Scarborough Shoal or Bajo de Masinloc,  and the Spratlys.

2. Part One of the 1808 Carta General del Archipiélago Filipino, the second official map of the Philippine territory during the Spanish regime. (Carpio has yet to find the original of the second half of this map.) It includes a hydrographic survey of Scarborough Shoal and, Carpio says,  one of the best historical documentary evidence that the shoal is part of the Philippine territory. 

3.  1875 Carta General del Archipiélago Filipino is a map dating back to the Spanish colonial era and adopted during the American period. It shows that Panatag (Scarborough Shoal) and the entire Kalayaan Group of Islands (or the Spratlys)—two of the most contentious points in the country’s maritime dispute with China—have always been part of Philippine territory.

4. The Philippine map attached to the 1898 Treaty of Paris, which marked the formal cession of the Philippines from Spain to the United States, is “incomplete” and “erroneous,” Carpio says, as it does not include Panatag Shoal and other islands of the Spratlys within Philippine territory. While the map misled many countries, Carpio says it is still valuable because it triggered the signing of the lesser known supplemental treaty, the Treaty of Washington, in 1900 which explicitly states that Spain ceded to the United States “any and all islands belonging to the Philippine archipelago lying outside the lines [within the Treaty of Paris].” 

In this month of our independence, history guides us, giving us solid ground to stand on in opposing China’s latest incursions on Scarborough Shoal. 

Let me know what you think. You can email me at marites.vitug@rappler.com.

Till next newsletter!

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