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The Kalayaan, Panatag & other disputed islands; Future conflict zones?
Topic Started: Feb 2 2005, 08:00 PM (156,109 Views)
israeli
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from the way i see things, we can now determine the true intentions of our politicians and who among them are traitors to the Republic. :demon:
"To secure peace is to prepare for war." - Carl Von Clausewitz
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flipzi
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R-A-T-S

Talking of technicality, i believe it is best that Senator Miriam Santigao takes a strong role in the discussion among the so-called "experts".

As it seems it is she alone who knows deep enough about the complexity of this issue.

View this one;

http://www.inquirer.net/vdo/player.php?vid=613

Quote:
 
MANILA, Philippines--Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago explains the effects of drawing the archipelagic baselines of the Philippines. Video taken by INQUIRER.net reporter Veronica Uy at the Senate on April 21, 2008.
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" Sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them! - Art. II Sec 1, Philippine Constitution "


" People don't care what we know until they know we care. "


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flipzi
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“They think that it takes simply drawing baselines and it’s finished. And they included certain contested islands there. There are many complications there. The boundaries of the Philippines will become very much smaller if we declare it an archipelagic state under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea because the boundaries of the Philippines, as specified in the Treaty of Paris, are so much wider. So why should we be in a hurry to narrow down our own internal waters?” she argued.

“If we join the rush to comply with the archipelagic baselines deadline — which is May next year — that will give to all foreign vessels the right of archipelagic sea lanes passage that has been overlooked by all these commentators on our baselines,” Santiago stressed.

Santiago said these foreign vessels would not need permission from the Philippines and would have “freedom to do whatever they want as long as they don’t get caught doing it.”

“Right now, the waters among and between our islands belong to the Philippines,” she said.

The UNCLOS, Santiago said, “does not impose a compulsory duty for archipelagic states to draw their baselines because the convention states that ‘the state may draw,’ it does not say ‘shall draw.’”

“There is no penalty if you don’t declare your baselines,” she said.

However, the House members and government officials have said the country might lose the KIG and other areas as its claim for an extended continental shelf teeming with fishery and mineral resources will be forfeited if the deadline is not met.

Santiago said given all the technicalities involved in the issue, the public must be taught by those who should know better, thus the lawmakers must refrain from talking irresponsibly, especially on television.

Under UNCLOS, each state is authorized to explore and use resources of its continental shelf and adjacent seabed up to 200 miles from its shore. In cases where the margins exceed 200 miles from the baselines, these states can assert their respective claims to these extended continental shelf areas.

An amendatory law is needed because the Philippines’ existing baselines, as defined by Republic Act 3046 and amended by RA 5446, are not in accordance with the parameters set under UNCLOS.

For his part, Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. called on the Senate and House of Representatives not to succumb to Malacañang’s pressure to water down the bill delineating the archipelagic baselines of the Philippines by putting the KIG and Scarborough Shoal outside of the territorial boundaries.

Pimentel said the Palace’s position to treat the KIG and Scarborough Shoal as “regime of islands” instead of making them part of the baselines would have the effect of weakening the Philippine claim to those islands over which it already exercises effective sovereign control.

“The proposed exclusion of the Spratlys and Scarborough Shoal is tragic, if not treasonous,” Pimentel, who lifted Cuenco’s bill and filed it at the Senate, said.

“It’s the duty of President Arroyo to assert our territorial claims forcefully but peacefully,” he said.

He said the Palace’s resistance to the bill, as presently drafted, “only fuels the suspicion that the Arroyo government does not want to offend China because it may jeopardize the economic and business package” that was promised by Beijing.

http://philstar.com/index.php?Headlines&p=...aid=20080422114

Remember that it was Sec. Eduardo Ermita who wrote to the Congress suggesting that we instead seek a "regime of islands” concept instead of being clearly a part of our territory.

You know what that move means. :nono:
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" Sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them! - Art. II Sec 1, Philippine Constitution "


" People don't care what we know until they know we care. "


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flipzi
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[FilipinoAegis]
Joke of the Day: Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelago marks 33rd liberation day

Thursday, May 1, 2008 12:03 AM
From:
"Perry Diaz" <PerryDiaz@gmail.com>
Add sender to Contacts
To:
BALITA-USA@yahoogroups.com

Dear Folks,

          Vietnam is celebrating the 33rd anniversary of the liberation of the Spratly archipelago.  This sounds like a joke.  But no, it's not a joke.  The story goes that back in 1975, Vietnam sent an "invasion" force to one of the Spratly islands occupied by the Philippine military.  However, the soldiers garrisoned in that island were in another island celebrating their commander's birthday.  It was rumored that the Vietnamese sent a birthday cake -- a ploy -- to the Pinoy commander before they sent the "invasion" force.  When the Pinoy soldiers went back to their island, the Vietnamese had already established a camp.  The Filipino soldiers withdrew without a shot being fired.

            Recently, one of Gloria's henchmen suggested that the 30 Philippine soldiers stationed in the Spratlys be removed and convert the Spratlys into a tourist destination.  Sounds like a good idea.  However, I'm pretty sure the moment the Filipino soldiers leave, the Chinese, Vietnamese or Taiwanese would take over.

            It's time for Gloria and her henchmen to stop acting like clowns.  Gloria should not stop Congress from passing the Baseline bill; otherwise, the Philippines would lose the Spratlys by default.  The 1975 Vietnamese "invasion" should serve as a lesson to Gloria.

Perry 


Quote:
 
Truong Sa archipelago marks 33rd liberation day
14:16' 29/04/2008 (GMT+7)

Photo: VNN
VietNamNet Bridge – A celebration has been held by the central Khanh Hoa province's People's Committee and the Navy Command to mark the 33rd anniversary of the liberation of the Truong Sa archipelago (Spratly).

Over the past 33 years, the local people and army have overcome difficulties to achieve socio-economic development and national defence and security targets.

The locals now produce their own green vegetables and have access to clean water. They have developed their islands into more beautiful, environmentally hygienic and strong regions, contributing to the country's renewal.

The celebration saw the Song Tu Tay, Sinh Ton island communes and Truong Sa Town presented with certificates of merit for their success in completing tasks in 2007.
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" Sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them! - Art. II Sec 1, Philippine Constitution "


" People don't care what we know until they know we care. "


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Vermonter
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"It was reported that in 1989 2 North Korean boats landed along with 10 Chinese Marines and 4 Malaysian Frogmen in an attempt to capture the Scarborough Shoal and drive out the Filipinos from the island. Philippine troops started firing at Chinese troops. A gun battle was fought between Philippine troops and Chinese troops. After the main battle 4 Chinese troops were injured and 2 were killed.


[edit] Vietnamese involvment
It was reported that one landing boat and 8 Vietnamese snipers landed on Scarborough Shoal to help the Filipinos fight and left as soon as the Chinese retreated. It was said that the Vietnamese aided the Filipinos in fighting to take revenge on the Chinese after the Chinese defeated Vietnam in the Johnson South Reef Skirmish."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarborough_Shoal

Someone please verify this?
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truegrit


Beijing, February 18, 2009 (AFP) - China on Wednesday slammed the Philippines for laying claim to parts of the disputed Spratly Islands, calling the move a violation of Chinese sovereignty.

"The government of the People’s Republic of China has indisputable sovereignty over these islands and their adjacent waters," said a statement issued by the foreign ministry.

The statement took exception to Philippine claims on Huangyan Island -- also known as Scarborough Shoal -- and other parts of the Spratlys, which are known in China as the Nansha islands.

"Claims to territory sovereignty over Huangyan Island and the Nansha Islands by any other country are all illegal and invalid," the statement said.

Philippine lawmakers on Tuesday passed a bill spelling out its claims in the South China Sea, whose islands are claimed in whole or in part by a host of Asian nations.

The legislation, however, also acknowledges rival claims.

Included within the Philippine claims are the Scarborough Shoal, also claimed by China, and part of the Spratly chain, also claimed in whole or in part by Brunei, China, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam.

China's official Xinhua news agency said Vice Foreign Minister Wang Guangya summoned the charge d'affaires of the Philippine embassy in Beijing on Wednesday to lodge a "stern protest" over the bill.

There was no immediate mention of any retaliatory measures.

The islands sit astride vital sea lanes and may contain significant oil and gas deposits.
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saver111
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US urged to back RP in Spratlys claim
By Pia Lee-Brago Updated March 06, 2009 12:00 AM

MANILA, Philippines - The United States should “unequivocally support” the right of the Philippines to stake its claims in the South China Sea as well as point out the “aggressive, unreasonable nature” of China’s territorial claim in the area, a US-based think tank has said.

Walter Lohman, director of the Heritage Foundation Asian Studies Center, said that while the US does not support any particular claim, it should “bring attention to the responsible, deliberative, legal nature” of the Philippines’ claim. Lohman’s observation is contained in a policy research paper titled “Spratly Islands: The Challenge to US Leadership in the South China Sea.”

Lohman said that legality aside, any territorial claim should pass a common sense test. “Claiming sovereignty over 648,000 square miles of sea bordering on eight countries is absolutely untenable. And the US ought to say so,” Lohman said of China’s claim.

“The Philippines has done the world a great favor by reminding it of Chinese ambitions,” he said.

He cited China’s use of 2,000-year-old maps as reference as well as its “imaginative reading” of the Law of the Sea Treaty.

“Ultimately, the US cannot remain neutral in a dispute between an ally and its competition for regional influence - China,” he said.

“If an alliance does not at least mean dispensing with neutrality in choosing your friends, then what does it mean?”

He said the Chinese appeared to be playing on the “ambiguities” in the American position.

“Left unchallenged, the Chinese claim to the South China Sea could one day leave the American Pacific Fleet asking Chinese permission to conduct routine operations,” Lohman warned.[/b] “If the Chinese claims calcify at a pace similar to the development of their navy, in another 10 years, the US will have a real crisis on its hands,”[/b] he said.

The Spratly Islands dispute, Lohman said, is not just the Philippines’ problem and that it is an even bigger problem for the US and all who rely on its leadership in the Asia Pacific.

The old issue of conflicting claims over the Spratly Islands resurfaced on the eve of the annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Thailand last week.

“There is nothing simple about this dispute. Taiwan and Vietnam claim all of the Spratly Islands. And the specific Bruneian and Malaysian claims overlap those of the Philippines,” Lohman said. “But it is the Chinese claim - because of its aggressive scope, the history behind it, and China’s growing military capacity to back it up - that poses the real problem to regional stability,” he said.

He called the Chinese claim “expansive,” noting that the Kalayaan Islands are 1,000 nautical miles from China. By contrast, Lohman said, Palawan is roughly 230 miles away.

“Incidentally, the Kalayaans are a municipality of Palawan. Yet China also claims territory even closer to Palawan Island: Mischief Reef, the source of so much diplomatic scuffling 10 years ago, is only 135 miles away,” he said.

He added that the Chinese claim not only the Spratlys but 80 percent of the South China Sea.

“Critically, the claim is passively supported by China’s growing military prowess (double-digit annual growth in military spending and an expanding fleet of sophisticated warships and submarines) and what increasingly appears to be deliberate ambiguity about the intentions behind this buildup,” he said.

“This is a diplomatic problem,” Lohman said. “The possibility that this dispute could escalate to a point where the US could be called to invoke its treaty obligations to the Philippines is remote,” he said referring to the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty.

“It did not reach that point in the mid-1990s - a much more contentious environment than today. But the risk of serious conflict only increases with time,” Lohman said.

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?artic...ubCategoryId=63
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Justice for Daniel Lorenz Jacinto

HELP END PIRACY NOW!:
http://www.itfseafarers.org/petition.cfm
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israeli
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something all of us here in the Philippines should be aware of- increased Chinese aggressiveness in enforcing their claim to a vast portion of the South China Sea, including areas that rightfully belong to the Republic of the Philippines and its people.


Quote:
 
China navy officers harangue U.S. over ocean spat
By Chris Buckley
Reuters, as posted on Yahoo! News
1 hr 43 mins ago


BEIJING (Reuters) – Senior Chinese navy officers poured scorn on the United States in the wake of a weekend naval confrontation, with one saying the "Americans are villains crying foul" as fallout between the two giants simmered.

In comments carried by the official China News Service, Chinese officers repeated their government's view that a U.S. naval vessel had violated the country's sovereignty during an encounter with Chinese boats in the South China Sea on Sunday.

Five Chinese boats jostled with the U.S. Navy survey vessel in waters off China's southern Hainan island, a major base for Beijing's expanding navy.

A senior U.S. intelligence official said the confrontation showed China's increasingly aggressive military stance in the South China Sea.

But Beijing pressed its claim the U.S. vessel was in the wrong.

"The Americans are villains crying foul first," said Zhang Deshun, a Chinese navy deputy chief of staff, the China News Service reported late on Tuesday.

"The U.S. side has twisted the facts. The U.S. survey ship was operating in China's exclusive economic zone on its continental shelf. Our vessels were just going about normal business ... This was itself harming China's sovereignty."

Chinese newspapers and websites played down the spat, apparently to avoid any diplomatic fallout.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry reissued on its website on Wednesday a statement by spokesman Ma Zhaoxu at a briefing on Tuesday, but dropped a phrase about the Americans "confusing black and white."

A Communist Party commissar in the navy, Wu Huayang, told the news agency the incident had been "stirred up by the U.S.."

There have been no signs the fracas will derail broader political and economic negotiations while Washington and Beijing are preoccupied with the global financial crisis.

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi is visiting Washington to lay the groundwork for a meeting between Chinese President Hu Jintao and President Barack Obama at the G20 summit next month.

But the tough comments from China's navy suggest Beijing is hardening its stance on claims to stretches of the South China Sea.

"According to international sea laws and rules, in this (exclusive economic) zone the ships of various countries can merely pass through freely," said Wu, the commissar.

Chinese officials have said the U.S. vessel was carrying out illegal surveying activities.

U.S. National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair told Congress the Chinese had become more assertive in staking claims to international waters around economic zones and were "more military, aggressive, forward-looking than we saw a couple years before" in Southeast Asia and the South China Sea.

The United States accused China of harassing the U.S. ship, the Impeccable, in international waters off Hainan, site of a Chinese submarine base and other naval installations.

The Pentagon has said the American ship, an unarmed ocean surveillance vessel, was conducting routine operations in the South China Sea 75 miles south of Hainan.

But China insists the Impeccable's operations were neither routine nor legal.

The Impeccable was specifically designed to deploy two underwater listening devices to augment the Navy's anti-submarine warfare capability, according to http://www.globalsecurity.org.

"If people are loitering outside your bamboo fence and the owner goes out to check on things, and then they say you've violated their rights, what's the sense in that?" said Jin Mao, a Chinese vice admiral, according to the news agency.


(Additional reporting by Yu Le and Benjamin Kang Lim; Editing by Nick Macfie and Jerry Norton)


this fact should be more than enough reason for us to beef up our external defense capabilities. we simply CANNOT and SHOULD NOT allow the Chinese to take over territory that rightfully belongs of us.
"To secure peace is to prepare for war." - Carl Von Clausewitz
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valiant
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this fact should be more than enough reason for us to beef up our external defense capabilities. we simply CANNOT and SHOULD NOT allow the Chinese to take over territory that rightfully belongs of us.


problem is the Chinese also think the islands or islets rightfully belong to them and they have a far more powerful military to back their claims.

We solve our internal problems first and just pray that the US will take on the China in that area.
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China is always playing the game of saber rattling. They cannot even put back their renegade province of Taiwan to the fold. It is not that easy for them to grab the Spratlys. If without the Americans to protect the Philippines it should be a breeze for them to annex the Spratleys to their territory without even a minute of resistance.
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