Manila's UN challenge vs China over disputed waters gathers pace behind 'formidable' legal team

Manila's UN challenge vs China over disputed waters gathers pace behind 'formidable' legal team

HONG KONG - The Philippines' legal challenge against China's claims in the South China Sea is gathering pace, emerging as a "proxy battle" over Beijing's territorial reach.

Manila has assembled a crack international legal team to fight its unprecedented arbitration case under the United Nations' Convention on the Law of the Sea - ignoring growing pressure from Beijing to scrap the action.

Any result will be unenforceable, legal experts say, but will carry considerable moral and political weight.

The Philippines has invested a "huge amount of political capital in this legal gambit and it wants to ensure success regardless of the cost," said security scholar Ian Storey of Singapore's Institute of South East Asian Studies.

"If the Philippine team submits a less than convincing case...this would be very embarrassing for Manila and put it right back to square one in its dispute with China.

"Beijing would also be emboldened to pursue its claims even more assertively than it has been doing over the past few years."

Beyond the legal questions, the case carries political and diplomatic risks and is being closely watched by Japan and Vietnam, locked in their own disputes with China over sea territory, officials from both countries say.

The United States, which is deepening military ties with the Philippines, a longstanding treaty ally, is also watching.

The legal battle mirrors tensions at sea, where China and the Philippines eye each other over rival occupations of the Scarborough and Second Thomas shoals.

Chinese vessels occupied Scarborough after a tense two-month standoff between rival vessels last year - a move some regional analysts have described as an effective annexation by Beijing.

The Philippines accused China of further encroachment when a naval frigate and two other ships steamed within five nautical miles of a dilapidated transport ship that Manila ran aground on Second Thomas Shoal in 1999 to mark its territory.

One Asian envoy from a non-claimant country said: "We are watching and worrying about an accident or miscalculation sparking an armed confrontation. So in some ways this growing legal fight looks like the proxy battle, you could say."

Overlapping claims in the South China Sea - traversed by half the world's shipping tonnage - are one of the region's biggest flashpoints amid China's military build-up and the U.S. strategic "pivot" back to Asia.

The claims of the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei are bisected by China's "nine-dash line" - the historic claim that reaches deep into the maritime heart of Southeast Asia.

European states, Russia, India and South Korea are also monitoring events, given the sea's shipping lanes and potential oil and gas resources, diplomats and military officials say.

http://www.interaksyon.com/article/71686/manilas-un-challenge-vs-china-over-disputed-waters-gathers-pace-behind-formidable-legal-team

MNLF mobilizes Tausug fighters in Malaysia

MANILA, Philippines - The Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) has activated some 4,000 foreign trained Tausug fighters embedded in Sarawak and Sabah in Malaysia, group spokesman Emmanuel Fontanilla said yesterday.

Fontanilla said the mobilization of the fighters was aimed to protect Tausugs, who he claimed have been the subject of a crackdown by Malaysian authorities.

He said the MNLF fighters were in addition to the Sulu Sultanate Army led by Agbimuddin Kiram, the brother of Sulu Sultan Jamalul Kiram III, leading the armed struggle to reclaim their ancestral land in Sabah.

MNLF founding chairman Nur Misuari had declared Sarawak and Sabah as part of the Bangsa Moro Republik (BMR).

Fontanilla however clarified the MNLF fighters in Malaysia will act only in self-defense against any attack from Malaysian forces.

Fontanilla declined to elaborate how the armed group, called the Bangsa Moro Army in Malaysia, was “activated,” but a source revealed at least five countries are supporting it with arms shipments that had arrived in the disputed territory.

 “Just like what happened in the early ‘70s at the height of Mindanao conflict, Sabah and Sarawak will be the main base of the Bangsa Moro Army,” the source said.

The source said the MNLF in the early ‘70s had set up guerrilla and training camps in Sabah with the consent of the Malaysian government at the time.

The source added huge arms shipments were also sent to MNLF in Mindanao weeks before Misuari declared independence in Talipao, Sulu last Aug. 12.

“MNLF troops are now bearing modern assault weapons coming from foreign supporters,” the source said.

Fontanilla however denied the arms shipment, saying the reports were part of government propaganda.

http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2013/09/09/1188941/mnlf-mobilizes-tausug-fighters-malaysia

UN tribunal starts arbitration process on PHL-China sea dispute

UN tribunal starts arbitration process on PHL-China sea dispute

July 16, 2013 4:50pm

A United Nations tribunal has been convened in the Netherlands to look into a complaint filed by the Philippines questioning the legality of China’s massive territorial claim in the resource-rich South China Sea.

“The Philippine government is pleased that the Arbitral Tribunal is now formally constituted, and that the arbitration process has begun,” Foreign Affairs spokesman Raul Hernandez told a press briefing Tuesday.
   
The progress in the Philippines’s legal challenge against China comes amid increasing animosity between the two Asian neighbors due to their long-standing territorial conflict.

Manila and Beijing recently traded diplomatic barbs over the Philippines’s decision to seek international arbitration - the latest manifestation of a longstanding territorial feud between the two countries over South China Sea territories.

Recently, the conflict was reignited with tense confrontations between Chinese and Philippine vessels in two disputed shoals – Scarborough and Ayungin – off Manila’s western coasts.

At their first meeting on July 11, the President and Members of the Tribunal designated The Hague in the Netherlands as the seat of the arbitration and the Permanent Court of Arbitration as the Registry for the proceedings, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said.

Part of the process is to determine if the tribunal has jurisdiction over Manila’s complaint. The case will only proceed once the tribunal decides that the complaint filed by the Philippines has legal merit and falls under its jurisdiction.

“Whether they have decided jurisdiction, they will publicly announce this,” Hernandez said.

Manila pledged its “fullest cooperation” with the tribunal “in order to assure a fair, impartial and efficient process that produces a final and binding judgment in conformity with international law.”

http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/317703/news/nation/un-tribunal-starts-arbitration-process-on-phl-china-sea-dispute