Legal and academic documents and official maps in the Philippines show that its controversial territorial claims in the South China Sea has been disputable even inside the country over the past three decades.

Last week, the Philippine Congress passed the 2009 baseline bill that extends the archipelago's territory to include China's Huangyan Island and part of Nansha Islands in the South China Sea. The Chinese Foreign Ministry has lodged a stern protest, denouncing Manila's claim as "illegal and invalid."

But back in July 1997, Judge Eliodoro C. Ubiadas of the regional trial court of Olongapo city in Zambales province in a verdict dismissed, for lack of legal basis, the illegal entry charges filed against 21 Chinese fishermen detained seven nauticalmiles southeast of Huangyan Island, or Scarborough Shoal known by Filipinos.

The Philippines claimed the area is its territory or belongs to its exclusive economic zone. But Judge Ubiadas invoked a provision in the Presidential Decree 1599 stating that even though the exclusive economic zone extends to a distance of 200 nautical miles from the baselines, in cases where the outer limits of Philippines' exclusive economic zone overlap that of an adjacent or neighboring state, the common boundaries shall be determined byan agreement with the state concerned.

The accused "were apprehended in a place over which there is yet no agreement between the Chinese and the Philippine governments," so there can be no legal basis to conclude that "the accused entered the Philippine territory illegally," Judge Ubiadasruled.

Historical documents indicate that Huangyan Island has been part of China since the Yuan Dynasty (1271 to 1368), despite its geographical vicinity to the Philippine shore.

International law experts said that geographical vicinity does not at all constitute a basis for territorial claim and the Philippines can not claim sovereignty over the Huangyan Island solely on the ground that it is within 200 nautical miles from Philippine mainland.

The Huangyan Island lies 200 km west of the coastline of Zambales province.

Meanwhile, the 2009 baseline bill of the Philippines extends to cover more than 50 islets, shoals, and reefs of China's Nansha Islands, known as the Kalayaan Island Group by Manila.

The islands are declared as belonging and subject to the sovereignty of the Philippines under Presidential Decree 1596, a unilateral order issued by late president Ferdinand Marcos in 1978to claim sovereignty over the islands by geological proximity and "historic records," according to the baseline bill.

However, official maps sanctioned by the Philippine authority had only started to include the islands in the late 1970s and it was not until 10 years ago that "updated" maps with Nansha Islands within the Philippine territorial limits started to be widely circulated in the Philippines.

However, the latest Political Map of the Philippines available in bookstores, certified by the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority, clearly placed Huangyan Island outside the Philippine territorial limits.

Scholars said the undisputed and internationally accepted Philippine territorial limits are the ones decided by the treaty between the United States and Spain on Dec. 10, 1898 and the treaty between the United States and Spain on Nov. 7, 1900 and the treaty between the United States and Great Britain on Jan. 2, 1930.

Of all these treaties, Nansha Islands are outside of the Philippine territorial limits and Manila reiterated it in the Philippine constitution and other relevant treaties from 1930s to the 1970s.

The 1987 constitution, however, revised the Philippine national territory to include "all other territories over which the Philippines has sovereignty or jurisdiction," evading the constitutionality issue for absorbing territories Manila does not own by historic rights or internationally accepted legal titles.

In his 1999 book "The Nanshas (Spratlys) Disputes," Dr. Robert Hsiao Shiching, a former professor of the University of Sto. Tomasin Manila, said the approximate area of 64,976 square miles of the islands has long been a portion of China's Nansha Islands and China's sovereignty over the Nanshas has been widely recognized by the international community.

Despite their geographical proximity to the western territorial boundaries of the Philippines, "the Nansha Islands are suited beyond the Philippine continental platform and separated from Philippine territory limits by the 1,300-2,600 meters deep Palawan Trench along the Palawan Passage," Dr. Shiching said in the book.

Manuel O. Chua, chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Manila-based Tulay Foundation, Inc., said he gave a copy of the book to Miriam Defensor-Santiago, chairperson of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before she completed drafting the baseline bill, to avoid tension and promote understanding, cooperation and amity between the Philippines and China.

"It's a highly political issue. Actually many lawmakers are in favor of a more aggressive version of the bill," Chua said of the bill's passage.

Chua lamented the brewing tension in the South China Sea, and considered it a setback after China and countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations agreed on a landmark code of conduct in 2002 -- the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea.

In the declaration, signatories agreed to seek a peaceful settlement of the disputes over the South China Sea through friendly coordination and negotiation and to exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities that would complicate or escalate disputes and affect peace and stability.

Source: Xinhua