CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – The country’s biggest fishers’ group urged yesterday a Chinese professor to “back off” from the case filed by the Philippines before the UN-led International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) over territorial disputes with China in the West Philippine Sea, also referred to as the South China Sea.
The Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya) said Prof. Zhiquo Gao, a member of ITLOS, should “back off from influencing the outcome of the case fi led by the Philippine government against China’s excessive claim in the South China Sea, in favor of Beijing.”
In a statement, Pamalakaya Vice Chairperson Salvador France said “to ensure fair judgement and avoid influence peddling in ITLOS, the China legal scholar who wrote an article about the 9-dash line published by the American Journal of International Law (AJIL) should cease and desist from taking any part in the arbitration process of the case filed by the Philippine government against Beijing before the international tribunal.”
While Gao is reportedly not a member of an ad-hoc tribunal created to hear the Philippine case against China, France said the professor’s “legal article supporting China’s ridiculous claim and his highly influential presence as one of the ITLOS judges can be exploited by Beijing to frustrate the legitimate case against China over South China Sea.”
“It may influence the decision of ad-hoc body tasked to hear the Philippine case against China despite the fact that Beijing refused to honor the arbitration process before the ITLOS,” France said. Pamalakaya has maintained that “the Chinese government violated national sovereignty and territorial rights of nearly 100 million Filipinos for insisting that Ayungin Shoal and eight other contested islands in South China Sea belong to Beijing under the 9-dash line rule.”
The group urged China to drop its claim over the Ayungin Shoal and “other areas currently occupied by Chinese military forces such as the Mischief Reef, McKennan Reef, Subi Reef, Gaven Reef, Scarborough Shoal, Johnson Reef, Cuarteron Reef and Fiery Cross Reef.”
“If we go back to history, the Bajo de Masinloc in Zambales and the rest of the eight islands and territorial waters surrounding and interconnecting these islands and ocean waters are clearly defined in the old Spanish map known as Morillo Map and when the Spanish colonizers ceded the control of the Philippines to American colonizers at the turn of 20th century, these contested islands were included in the map as part of the Philippine territory,” Pamalakaya said.
It also noted that “the Treaty of Paris between Spain and US signed on December 10, 1898 clearly stipulate that these islands illegally claim by Beijing rightfully belongs to the Philippines.” This, even as Pamalakaya also slammed the US government “for meddling in the current row between Manila and Beijing.”
“The US government is manipulating all issues surrounding South China Sea to effectively promote increasing US military presence in the contested South China Sea” and that “the Philippine government is consistently playing its role to the hilt as the front act person of the United States in its own war with China over the South China Sea.”
