South China Sea: Beijing’s case against forced arbitration
China says a declaration it made a decade ago should have prevented the Permanent Court of Arbitration from ruling on the South China Sea disputes, and also justified Beijing’s decision not to take part in the Hague proceedings.
Even though the decision to ignore the tribunal’s ruling has raised questions about Beijing’s respect for international law, China insisted the international tribunal had no jurisdiction to decide the case.
Beijing’s main argument, presented in a series of official statements between 2014 and the release of a white paper yesterday, is that the South China Sea disputes are inseparable from sovereignty issues.
As such, the issues were beyond the scope of the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (Unclos), which the tribunal referred to in its ruling delivered on Tuesday.
The official documents from Beijing stated that the tribunal, formed under the convention, had no jurisdiction to decide issues of sovereignty.
In a lengthy article released by Xinhua after the ruling, China said it released a written declaration in 2006 that said disputes concerning maritime delimitation and other issues should not be settled through compulsory procedures without its agreement.
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But the tribunal still accepted the case and declared its own jurisdiction over the issue.
Despite saying in the ruling it did not decide on sovereignty and maritime delimitation, the tribunal did determine whether the land features in the disputed waters were islands or not, and commented on some of China’s law enforcement activities in the waters.
Legal experts said such decisions touched on sovereignty issues.
“It is the terrestrial territorial situation that must be taken as a starting point for the determination of the maritime rights of a coastal state,” Chris Whomersley, a former deputy legal adviser to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, said in a recent article.
It seemed unprecedented for an international tribunal to consider the status of a feature when the territorial sovereignty over that feature was disputed, he added.
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/1989579/south-china-sea-beijings-case-against-forced
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Chris Whomersley, a former deputy legal adviser to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, said that, huh?
And who the HELL is Chris Whomersley to GAINSAY the international tribunal, you might ask?
"Chris Whomersley has recently retired as Deputy Legal Adviser in the United Kingdom’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office after a career spanning thirty-six years and covering many areas of international law. Chris spent a number of years dealing with aviation issues, and he has been involved in the Channel Tunnel project since its inception. For the last ten years, he was responsible for policy on international law of the sea. This included dealing with these issues both multilaterally and bilaterally, as well as in the European Union. He led the United Kingdom delegations in a number of bilateral negotiations on maritime delimitation. He was also the leader of the UK delegation to the International Seabed Authority, and was a member of its Finance Committee. Recently, he was responsible for the arrangements relating to the declaration of an Exclusive Economic Zone around the United Kingdom, as well as for the law updating UK legislation on deep sea mining. In 2014 Chris was honoured by HM The Queen for his services to international law."
http://www.thegreenwichforum.co.uk/chris-whomersley/
Oh, it seems that Chris Whomersley might actually know what he's talking about. Go figure.
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