Carpio’s big disinformation
First of a series
IT is one of the biggest falsehoods ever disseminated, which has been one of the three most important erroneous bases* of the Aquino III and Marcos Jr.’s hostile stance against China, and the Sinophobia that the US propagandists have spread in the country. This is the claim that — as even Marcos himself as president recently claimed — “Scarborough Shoal is a longstanding and integral part of the Philippines.”
The hard truth, supported by documents and maps I will present here, is that Scarborough Shoal (Bajo de Masinloc to us) was never a part of Philippine territory. The territory that Spain ceded to the US in 1898 did not include it because of the Americans’ geopolitical concerns.
It is amazing that since 2011, retired magistrate Antonio Carpio has been claiming that the United States “amended” the 1898 Treaty of Paris through the Treaty of Washington (1900) so that Bajo de Masinloc fell within Philippine territory. In his 2011 lecture, he claimed:
“The Treaty of Washington of 1900 between Spain and the United States extended the territory of the Philippines to include all islands belonging to the Philippine Archipelago that lay outside the lines of the Treaty of Paris, such as Scarborough Shoal.”
He has repeated this lie at least 140 times in his lectures in Philippine embassies around the world. His 2017 e-book, which provided the totality of his views on our disputes with China, Carpio wrote:
“When the Americans came to the Philippines after the signing of the 1898 Treaty of Paris, they found out that there were many islands belonging to Spain lying outside of the treaty lines of the 1900 Treaty of Washington. Spain clarified in this second treaty that it had also relinquished to the US all title and claim of title, which (Spain) may have had at the time of the conclusion of the Treaty of Peace of Paris, to any and all islands belonging to the Philippine Archipelago, lying outside the lines of the Treaty of Paris. Thus, Spain ceded the Spratlys and Scarborough Shoal to the US under the 1900 Treaty of Washington.”
Fabrication
This is a brazen fabrication. Our historians and foreign-service corps should be ashamed that they have let Carpio get away with spreading this falsehood, when there are volumes of historical evidence and maps that prove he is lying through his teeth.
Worse, this lie is believed by so many that the Philippine Coast Guard and even the Philippine Navy have been ordering their sailors to risk their lives by forcing their way into the area since it is, as the robotic Jay Tarriela declares, “part of Philippine territory” that they have sworn to defend. Carpio’s is a case study of the power of that Hitlerian propaganda tactic: A lie is repeated often enough, and it becomes the truth.
In the Treaty of Paris signed in December 1898, by which Spain surrendered to America, the Spanish colony was ceded for $20 million to the US. The treaty drew an explicit line on the waters surrounding the archipelago, determined by precise geographical coordinates, and everything within that constructed polygon was declared as the Philippine Islands that became US territory.
Scarborough was not included in the Philippine Islands as defined by the treaty. The exclusion of the shoal was so precise it wasn’t an oversight: The polygon’s western boundary was at 118 degrees east, thus excluding Scarborough, located 117 degrees 45 minutes east, by just 0.2 degrees or 25 kilometers.
If there is any foreign power to blame for why Scarbrough, just 254 kilometers from the Zambales coastline, never was part of Philippine territory, it would be the United States.
Stop
The US expanded the western side of its new territory to be as wide as possible but had to abruptly stop just before Scarborough. Why?
The US didn’t want to be viewed as the rising imperialist competing with the two superpowers at that time, France and Great Britain, and was being careful. The Americans followed Spanish hydrographic charts that did not include Bajo de Masinloc within the “Philippine Archipelago.” Those maps, produced by Spain’s Dirección de Hidrografía, treated the shoal as a remote maritime feature used occasionally by Zambales fishermen but never governed from Manila.
The Americans also had clear instructions from Washington: Take only what Spain actually ruled. They were not to grab uninhabited reefs that might provoke Britain or France, both of which had nearby South China Sea littoral colonies.
Indeed, by the late 19th century, Britain had colonized Malaya, Borneo and Myanmar, while France controlled Indochina. America had no foothold in the area. A US move to include Scarborough Shoal as part of its Philippine possessions would have been interpreted as an American action to compete with the two empires, which at that time were more powerful than the US.
Spain, for its part, had never administered nor claimed Scarborough. It had no comandancia, no parish, no tax collector, no garrison — nothing. It was for Madrid and Washington merely a navigational hazard in the South China Sea.
Harbor
Nor did the US Navy see any value in it, as their new territory already had the brand-new Subic Bay, which had a deep harbor, built by the Spanish in 1885. The isolated reef off Zambales offered no coaling potential, no anchorage, no military use.
However, a year after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, US officials pointed out that the treaty had a major mistake. The treaty did not include the islands of Sibutu and Cagayan de Sulu in the territory’s most southern part.
There were two important reasons why the US had to amend the treaty to include these islands.
First, while these were just small, remote islands, they were located astride one of Asia’s busiest maritime corridors at that time — the Sibutu Passage, gateway between the Sulu and Celebes Seas.
Spain had ruled these isles from Sulu, taxed them, and maintained posts there. But the Paris treaty didn’t include these two islands.
Sibutu was militarily and economically strategic, the US War Department argued. The narrow, deep channel between Sibutu Island and Borneo is a natural route between the Sulu and Celebes Seas — an artery for trade, piracy, and later, oil shipping.
By occupying the two islands, the Americans could monitor and restrict every vessel entering the Sulu Sea. It was a naval choke point, a natural customs gate, and a defensive line rolled into one. When the Treaty of Washington in 1901 took effect, US survey ships immediately charted the area, built signal stations and installed navigation lights.
Second, without US sovereignty over the two islands, its plans to convince the Sultan of Sulu to be its vassal will not push through, risking the resumption of hostilities with the fierce Moros. Sultan Jamalul Kiram II agreed in August 1899, or after the December 1898 Paris treaty, to recognize US sovereignty over his sultanate, in exchange for the Americans’ non-interference in their religion and domestic affairs, a monthly stipend of 250 Mexican dollars to him and 200 to his datus, and the US military’s protection of his kingdom.
Sibutu and Cagayan de Sulu were part of Kiram II’s sultanate, and he would have lost these two strategic islands to the British if the US did not include them in their new Philippine territory.
The US rushed to pressure Spain to amend the Treaty of Paris to include Sibutu and Cagayan de Sulu. The Americans even offered the Spaniards $100,000 to agree to the amendment, which was finally signed in 1900 in Washington.
The 1900 Washington Treaty that expanded the Philippine territory involved only these two islands, and had nothing to do with Scarborough. That it included this area is a figment of Carpio’s mind, a shameless fabrication that was part of a US-formulated campaign to demonize China in the minds of Filipinos.
There is absolutely no map that shows that the Washington treaty amended the Paris treaty to enclose Scarborough. Instead, all maps after 1900 show that the Treaty of Washington involved only the two southern islands.
Map 1 is a 1900 US map that shows the Philippine territorial limits, as defined by the 1898 Paris (the polygon in thick lines) treaty and its expansion by the 1900 Washington treaty to include Sibutu and Cagayan de Sulu, which are in the rectangles enclosing these, facing Borneo. Scarborough wasn’t incorporated into Philippine territory.
Map 2 is a 1906 US map that identified the “Treaty of Paris Boundaries of Dec. 10, 1898” and the “Treaty of Washington Boundaries of Nov. 7, 1900.”
No maps exist that support Carpio’s preposterous claim that the Washington Treaty incorporated Scarborough Shoal.
The digital version of this column on my website rigoberto.tiglao@gmail com has better resolutions of these two maps and contains two other maps — a 1957 Philippine map and a 1973 US map — and a showing that Scarborough was never incorporated as part of our territory. Sources for this piece are also listed there.
*The other two are the false claim that the arbitral panel’s 2016 decision invalidated China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and that these are based on the so-called nine-dash line.
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Carpio’s big disinformation
Source: Breaking News PH
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