We don’t have an official map of the Philippines, for chrissakes!
First of two parts
ALMOST as regularly as Palace spokesman Claire Castro blurting out insane answers to reporters’ questions, the Philippine Navy and/or the Philippine Coast Guard issue a vacuous press statement, which media uncritically reports word for word, such as the following the other day in all broadsheets: “20 Chinese ships seen in West Philippine Sea.“
The number, I suspect, actually is a blank to be filled in, depending on the Navy or Coast Guard brass’ mood. Or after orders from Ray Powell, based in California and running a thinly disguised US Navy-funded anti-China outfit.
With Congress’ currently undertaking hearings on how big the Armed Forces’ budget should be for next year, expect such headlines more frequently, and even fleet-size Chinese ships will soon be spotted in the Philippine waters.
Such reportage is really insane and even hilarious, if not for the seriousness of the topic. The two armed organizations, which are supposed to guard our sovereign seas, the Philippine Navy and Coast Guard, don’t know the exact geographical coordinates in the vast sea that consists of our sovereignty, especially our exclusive economic zones (EEZs), where the Chinese or our vessels purportedly are when they scream that China is intruding into our territory.
Their officials boast their vessels have been boldly defending our “West Philippine Sea.” But that sea’s outer part is the limits of our EEZ. Do they have such a map on the exact boundaries of our EEZ? No. Could they be using US Navy maps?
It is amazing how retired justice Antonio Carpio fooled a lot of people, even the Foreign Affairs department and President Marcos, that a 1734 map by the Jesuit Pedro Murillo Velarde “proves” that Scarborough Shoal is part of Philippine territory, when a Philippine map circa 2020 officially issued by the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority (Namria), by law the only authority to issue official maps of country, clearly shows it is outside by 139 kilometers — the Philippine territory as defined by the 1898 treaty by which Spain sold its colony to the United States.
I had bugged Namria in 2020 to provide me with a map showing the Philippines’ territorial sea and exclusive economic zone. It denied my five freedom of information requests without any explanation.
Namria
However, Namria later sent me, without even an explanatory letter, two maps it had issued. The first was a map titled “Philippine Administrative Map.” While it was undated, it had a notation that it was published under “Undersecretary Diony Ventura” as administrator. Ventura was administrator from 2002 to 2010.
The map indicates Philippine territory as still defined by the 1898 Treaty of Paris, by which Spain ceded its colony to the US. That is, the territorial sea in this map are the waters inside the treaty limits. The map didn’t show any EEZ.
The second map shows the archipelago’s baselines, “as defined by Republic Act (RA) 9522” enacted 2009. Strangely, however, that law did not mention at all an EEZ as defined by Unclos, even if this was ratified in 1994.
The Philippine baselines are the lines drawn between 101 points determined by its geodesic coordinates which the law provided (i.e., longitudes and latitudes), which hew closely to the shape of the Philippine archipelago. Under the United Nations Law of the Sea (Unclos), the EEZ and seaward territorial seas are to be measured from these baselines (200 nautical miles for the former and 12 nautical miles for the latter). RA 9522 says nothing about these maritime areas. It is up to each state to issue its domestic laws where these maritime areas end, especially when there is an overlap with those of other countries. In our case, it took 20 years of negotiations starting in 1994 for the Philippines and Indonesia to agree to their zones’ boundaries.
I received an email on Jan. 22, 2021, from the head of Namria’s hydrography branch, Antonio Valenzuela Jr., responding to my last FOI request:
“We regret to inform you that we do not have an official Philippine map indicating the territorial sea, EEZ and other maritime zones since we are still awaiting for the maritime zones bill to become law. The Maritime Zones Law will be our basis in preparing the official map.”
This means that the Philippine Navy and Philippine Coast Guard, who have been all this time confronting Chinese vessels for alleged intrusion into our EEZ (200 nautical miles from the baselines), in reality had no map, no basis to claim so. Neither do they have one for our territorial sea, which is roughly 12 nautical miles from our mainland, or half the distance from the Mall of Asia to Corregidor Island.
However, the Maritime Zones Act, or Republic Act 12064, was signed into law by President Marcos Jr. on Nov. 7, 2024. It took effect Nov. 29, 2024, or 15 days after being published in the Official Gazette.
Namria, which is under the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, is given one year after the law was passed to produce the official map showing our territory, territorial waters and the EEZ. One year has passed but Namria still hasn’t issued any map. There is an official map for the geographical location of the EEZ’s start and end.
The law also ordered Congress to organize a joint Congressional Oversight Committee on the Law of the Sea not only to ensure that Namria does its job of producing the map but “to conduct a hearing at least once every quarter to review the implementation of this Act and identify other necessary legislation.”
No committee
No such committee has been organized, reflecting the low level of priority Congress gives to matters of asserting our sovereignty.
Imagine that: Coast Guard official Jay Tarriela keeps declaring in robot-like fashion that its sailors have defended, even if unsuccessfully, intrusions by Chinese vessels into our EEZ and even, he has said several times, our territorial waters.
Yet he doesn’t have any real proof, with the absence of an official map, where our EEZ begins and where it ends, whether a Chinese spotted at 13° 15’ N, 120° 45’ E according to jos compass, is within our territorial waters, or not. It’s like claiming that this lot is yours, yet you do not have the official title to it, which contains the surveyor’s detailed description of its location.
One result of this government neglect is that we have a generation of Filipinos using only purportedly obsolete maps of the Philippines, which the government itself no longer recognizes.
Recently, when I asked a National Book Store branch for a map being used in schools, I was given the one in the accompanying illustration here, which shows the Spain-US treaty limits, and an insert showing the hexagon of the Kalayaan Island Group that the strongman Marcos decreed in 1978 as part of Philippine territory, including all maritime features it encompasses. No EEZ at all shown in that map.
For all the Aquino III regime’s arbitration suit against China, which cost P1 billion (mostly going to fees of American firms and Philippine officials’ five-star travel expenses to The Hague) to claim that the superpower was encroaching on our EEZ, for all its massive, and expensive propaganda effort to demonize China as intruding into our “West Philippine Sea,” it didn’t bother to produce the “title” to our maritime areas.
This prodded the late foreign affairs undersecretary Rodolfo Severino, one of our most respected diplomats, to title his 2011 monograph on this issue, “Where in the World is the Philippines? Debating its National Territory.” That is, he argued, before the Philippines can firmly assert its territorial and maritime claims abroad, it must first clarify, to itself and in law, where in the world it actually is in territorial terms.
On Monday: President Aquino III’s 2012 arbitration suit has given the Philippines a difficult dilemma
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We don’t have an official map of the Philippines, for chrissakes!
Source: Breaking News PH
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