By Ade S. Fajardo
Sometime ago, the committee on national defense of the Commission on Appointments discussed the ad interim appointments and nominations of generals and other senior officers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
Among those appointees was Colonel Jacquelyn Cloma. Her husband is a great-grandson of Cloma fishing magnate Tomas Cloma, who is widely regarded as the Filipino who discovered the Kalayaan Island Group (KIG).
Senator Panfilo Lacson told Jacquelyn, “I would like to thank him for discovering and occupying and owning and donating to the Philippine government the Kalayaan Island Group.”
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Senator Rodante Marcoleta would have none of it.
He insisted that China, the United States, Japan, Australia, and even the Philippines objected when Tomas Cloma made a Freedom Declaration in 1956 formalizing his discovery of KIG.
“Kalayaan Island Group, at that time, is no longer treated as terra nullius, which means that it is not unoccupied and it was not undiscovered. Kaya po, Colonel, pati ang ating bansa vigorously objected. And that is why it is not correct to assume he discovered it because of several other discoverers prior to his time,” Marcoleta said.
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Freedomland was supposedly discovered by Tomas Cloma in 1947. He then directed his followers to settle in some islands in the Spratlys in 1956.
In 1974, by most accounts, Cloma was compelled to cede his “rights” over the territory to the Philippine government. President Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. ordered its integration in 1978 into Philippine territory.
Marcos also ordered the deployment of military personnel in Kalayaan upon recommendation of then Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile, who wanted physical occupation of the KIG islands. Concrete markers or lighthouses were constructed in some of these islands.
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The KIG falls within China’s nine-dash line claim.
It is described as a creeping invasion of other nations’ maritime territories. China claims that it had occupied the areas covered by the line for more or less 2,000 years.
Former Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio has called the nine-dash line the “fake news of the millennium.”
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Chinese governments until 1947 defined their territory as the land and maritime areas covered by the Qing Dynasty map since 1664.
In that map, Hainan Island is the southernmost territory of China, which is around 700 nautical miles away from the Spratlys.
As we know, the Unclos arbitral tribunal has debunked China’s purported historical rights over the South China Sea (SCS). There is no evidence suggesting that China historically regulated or controlled fishing in the SCS beyond the limits of its territorial sea.
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On the other hand, the 1734 Murillo Velarde map of the Philippine archipelago was admitted as evidence of Spanish territories during the colonial period.
These territories, which included the islands in question, were ceded by Spain to the United States of America under the Treaty of Paris and the Treaty of Washington.
Thus, regardless of the squabble over Cloma’s discovery claims, Justice Carpio is correct in urging the government to file a new international arbitration case to assert sovereignty over the Kalayaan Island Group./WDJ