Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) published another op-ed in the Wall Street Journal defending the legal status of Taiwan-controlled Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島) in the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島), saying that an international tribunal’s ruling on the South China Sea created more problems than answers for claimants in the disputed waters.
In an article titled “A Flawed Verdict in the South China Sea” published on Tuesday, Ma said the verdict handed down on July 12 by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands, was “unfair and patently unreasonable” for Taiwan.
Ma said the ruling downgraded the legal status of Itu Aba Island to a “rock,” although it is the largest naturally occurring island in the Spratlys and the only one in the area that produces fresh water.
“The Republic of China [ROC] government has effectively ruled Taiping Island for the past 70 years. Yet when the tribunal was discussing Taiping Island’s status, Taiwan was neither invited to participate nor consulted,” Ma wrote.
Despite submitting a 400-page amicus curiae brief detailing scientific evidence of Itu Aba’s natural conditions prior to the “onset of significant human modification,” the nongovernmental Chinese (Taiwan) International Law Society still saw its request for observer or witness status at the court denied, Ma added.
“Its open invitation for the arbitrators or Philippine officials to visit Taiping Island were flatly rejected,” Ma wrote, blasting the ruling as a single-party award based on “insufficient, outdated and inaccurate information.”
It is the second time in less than three months that Ma turned to the Wall Street Journal to defend the status of Itu Aba, which, along with all the other high-tide features in the Spratly Islands, were categorized by the tribunal’s ruling as “rocks” and are therefore not entitled to an exclusive economic zone.
Ma criticized the ruling’s “unreasonable logic,” writing that the tribunal modified the standards set forth in Article 121 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea by adding an extra requirement that a land feature should have an “objective capacity which can sustain a stable community of people.”
“It also ruled that economic activity should not be dependent on outside resources. Is there any island or city in the world today that is completely self-sufficient and independent of outside resources? The tribunal did not explain that either,” Ma wrote.
He also denounced the tribunal for disregarding his efforts to provide it with “new and accurate information” about Itu Aba, including making an on-site visit to the island, giving interviews with foreign media outlets and holding international press conferences.
“I believe the tribunal members’ absence from the on-site survey of Taiping Island ... was a key factor that led them to believe the one-sided story offered by representatives of the Philippines,” Ma wrote.“A remote ruling that lacks evidence from on-site investigation and testimony from eyewitnesses cannot be convincing — not for Taiwan nor for any other country whose island stakes are potentially threatened.”
The ruling produced more problems than answers for claimants in the dispute and created an obstacle rather than a path leading to a peaceful resolution, he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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