Boisée (Woody) Island or Phú Lȃm Island of the Paracels  Archipelago

belonged to Vietnam was invaded and occupied illegally by the Republic of China (Chiang Kai Check) in 1947 after the Japanese left Indochina .  Map US Marine 1944. Edited by Hoàng Hoa www.saigonfilms.com. Map Chart 5496 Copyrighted © by the US Marine 1944.

 

 

Caught between a reef and a hard place, Manila's South China Sea victory runs aground

https://www.yahoo.com/news/caught-between-reef-hard-place-manilas-south-china-034130348.html

By Greg Torode and Manuel Mogato,Reuters
HONG KONG/MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines may have won an emphatic legal victory over China in the South China Sea, but the aptly named Mischief Reef shows just how hard it will be for Manila to make its triumph count in the strategic waterway.
Chinese construction on the reef, which began two decades ago as a few rickety shelters perched on stilts, now covers an area larger than 500 football fields. It includes a 3 km (9,800 feet) runway, extensive housing, parade grounds and radar nests, satellite images show.
According to Tuesday's landmark ruling, however, the reef and everything on it legally belongs to the Philippines and no amount of time or building will change that.
Publicly, Manila has been unusually cautious in its response to the sweeping ruling, urging "restraint and sobriety". In private, officials acknowledge they have little hope of recovering Mischief Reef any time soon despite the unequivocal ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.
"This will take time, not in the next five or 10 years," said one senior Philippine navy official, requesting anonymity to speak freely on the highly sensitive matter.
It was, he said, "impossible to evict the Chinese there".
RESOLUTE RESPONSE
Beijing, which boycotted the case from the outset, says the ruling has no bearing on its rights in the South China Sea and has reasserted it claims to Mischief and other features.
On Thursday, the state-run People's Daily ran a picture on its front page of a civilian aircraft landing at the new Mischief airport, two Chinese flags rippling from the cockpit.
"As I've said before, it won't have any effect," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said, when asked if China would seek to bolster its sovereignty over Mischief Reef.
"At the same time, I want to stress that if any person wants to take the outcome of this arbitration as a basis for taking any provocative steps against China's interests, China will most certainly resolutely respond," Lu told reporters.
With the panel having no powers to enforce its ruling, mainland experts see no sign that China will scale back its actions across the South China Sea.
"The tribunal's decision is so sweeping that it is not going to help solve the problem," said Sienho Yee, an international law specialist at China's Wuhan University.
Other Chinese experts, speaking privately, said the ruling was being closely scrutinized, despite official statements dismissing its relevance.

Some among leadership elites had been "stung" by its comprehensive stance against China.
"There is surprise at the extent of the sheer arrogance of these judges sitting (in Europe) deciding what is a rock and what is an island," said one Beijing-based scholar.
"It can only serve to unify our leadership and harden Chinese views, and that includes the military leadership. There will be little appetite to take a step back."
Manila's "softly, softly" approach reflected its understanding of that risk, Philippine officials said.
"We should find ways to allow some face-saving actions because China could face tremendous domestic pressure," the Philippine navy official said. "We don't want the Chinese Communist Party to be overthrown by the more hot-headed people in the People's Liberation Army. That will be too dangerous."
President Xi Jinping has moved extensively to tighten his grip on power since assuming office almost four years ago and there has been no sign of any such action.
NOTHING MORE THAN SEABED
The decision on Mischief Reef is among the most significant within the 479-page judgment from the panel, which looked at the territorial rights of disputed reefs, rocks and shoals scattered throughout the key trade route.
At a stroke, the court dismissed Beijing's 69-year-old nine-dash line claim to much of the South China Sea and removed any legal basis for Beijing to create a network of linked territorial and economic seas under its control, legal experts said.
Mischief is China's eastern most holding in the resource-rich waterway. Some 300 km (185 miles) west of the Philippines' island of Palawan and 1,100 km (685 miles) from China's Hainan Island, it sits entirely within the Philippines' exclusive economic zone and on its continental shelf.
The panel ruled China's building of installations on reclaimed land, which accelerated sharply after 2014, was illegal and had "aggravated" the dispute under the U.N Convention on the Law of the Sea, under which Manila launched the case in 2013.
The judges backed Philippines' lawyers who used satellite, survey and historical data, including Chinese naval pilot notes, to show Mischief Reef is - legally at least - nothing more than seabed exposed at low tide.
The lawyers gave evidence that its traditional Chinese name - Mi Qi Fu - was based on Mischief's English name, according to court transcripts, seeking to undermine China's argument that it had been, in its words, "master" of the South China Sea for 2,000 years. China calls it Meiji Reef today.
POTENTIAL FLASHPOINT
Regional military officials and diplomats say Mischief is a clear flashpoint in what is expected to be months of tension after the ruling.

Others include Scarborough Shoal, a traditional Philippine fishing ground that was occupied by China in 2012, and Second Thomas Shoal, where a small group of Philippine soldiers is based in the rusting hulk of a grounded ship.

The United States is also watching Mischief closely and has repeatedly warned China against further development of islands within the waters of the Philippines, a formal security ally.
U.S. Republican Senator Dan Sullivan demanded on Wednesday that U.S. ships sail close to Mischief as part of pledged increases in so-called freedom-of-navigation operations.
A U.S. defense official also told Reuters that, if regional competition escalated into confrontation, U.S. naval and air forces were prepared to act to maintain free navigation.
Manila is clear it doesn't want to provoke China further.
"They are a bit angry now," Philippines' Defence Minister Delfin Lorenzana told Reuters. "Emotions are running high and we don't want to provide them any reason to react violently."
(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING and Martin Petty in MANILA; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

Yêu Cầu MapQuest.com không dùng chữ Tàu trên Bản đồ

Yêu Cầu MapQuest.com không dùng chữ Tàu trên Bản đồ  

tên đảo Woodland là Nansha và không dùng chữ Tàu cho một số đảo thuộc quần đảo Trường Sa (Spratly Islands) của Việt Nam Cộng Hòa

Toàn Văn Phán Quyết của Tòa Án Trung Gian Hòa Giải Le Hague July 12, 2016 về Vụ Kiện của Phi Luật Tân đối với Trung Cộng

Toàn văn này bằng Anh ngữ, nhưng ch’ng tôi sẽ cố gắng dịch sang Việt ngữ trong thời gian tới để người Việt Nam đọc hiểu.

PDF file:

http://www.haguejusticeportal.net/index.php?id=13573

https://pca-cpa.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/175/2016/07/PH-CN-20160712-Press-Release-No-11-English.pdf

Hoàng Hoa

What the South China Sea ruling means for the world

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/07/13/what-the-south-china-sea-ruling-means-for-the-world/

A verdict delivered by an international court in The Hague sent geopolitical shock waves through Asia.

The panel of judges at the Permanent Court of Arbitration said China's exclusive claims to a vast swath of territory in the South China Sea had no historical or legal basis, siding with the Philippines in a case that Manila had brought to the court in 2013 over China's expansive moves into a number of disputed islands and shoals.

The South China Sea is one of the world's most strategic bodies of water and remains a vital conduit for a huge proportion of global shipping. But it's also now perhaps the most treacherous flash point in the world, with the overlapping claims of half a dozen Asian governments constantly creating regional friction.

In recent times, separate disputes between China and the Philippines and Vietnam have led to minor skirmishes and naval standoffs. China, as The Washington Post has documented over the past year, has steadily sought to change the facts on the ground (or on the waves) in its favor, establishing military bases and building up new islands in areas under its control. The United States, meanwhile,recently deployed aircraft carriers to the region, a somewhat striking move.

The Chinese have long claimed virtually the entire South China Sea and the barren rocks and islands within it as their sovereign territory. The court, though, ruled against the legitimacy of China's "nine-dash line" -- marked on the map below -- which Beijing routinely invokes as the demarcation of its historical claim over the sea.

China rejects ruling on South China Sea as 'null and void'

GILLIAN WONG and GERRY SHIH,Associated Press 14 hours ago 

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-rejects-ruling-south-china-sea-null-void-122237861.html 

BEIJING (AP) — China swiftly rejected an international tribunal's ruling Tuesday that its expansive claim to the South China Sea had no legal basis, saying the ruling was null and void and that Beijing would not accept it.

The ruling by the five-member panel at The Hague handed a massive victory to the Philippines, which had filed the case in 2013 challenging the so-called nine-dash line that China uses to claim virtually the entire South China Sea. Manila opposed it because it infringes upon its own 200-mile exclusive economic zone.

Chinese President Xi Jinping repeated Beijing's stance that the South China Sea has been Chinese territory since "ancient times" and said China's territorial sovereignty and interests in the region would not be influenced under any circumstances by the ruling, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

"This farce is now over," said Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in an interview with state broadcaster CCTV. Meanwhile, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement: "China opposes and will never accept any claim or action based on those awards."

The ministry repeated China's often-expressed stance that the Philippines' move to initiate arbitration without China's consent had been in "bad faith" and in violation of international law.

The tribunal also said China had violated its obligations to refrain from aggravating the dispute while the settlement process was ongoing and also ruled that China's large-scale land reclamation and construction of artificial islands that destroyed coral reefs and the natural condition of the disputed areas.

Analysts said the ruling dealt a blow to China's South China Sea strategy by potentially providing ammunition to the arguments of other countries involved in maritime disputes with China. Six governments have overlapping territorial claims in the South China Sea — China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei. In addition, China's nine-dash line overlaps waters that are part of Indonesia's internationally recognized exclusive economic zone.

"It goes much farther than most people expected that this was going to go. It's really devastating for China," said Bonnie Glaser, senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. "It's quite serious for China and it doesn't open up a lot of opportunities for face saving-ways out."

Glaser said the ruling also meant that the Philippines would have less of an incentive to talk to China about sharing or jointly developing resources in the South China Sea.

Chen Xiangmiao, a researcher at the Chinese government-backed National Institute for South China Sea Studies, said the ruling was "very unfair" but he urged China to tone down its rhetoric against the arbitration process.

A strategic next step should be heightened diplomatic dialogue with the Philippines and Vietnam, he said. "Successful bilateral negotiation to work around the ruling would be an effective repudiation of the arbitration."

But China might choose to take a hard line with the Philippines, perhaps taking punitive measures such as sanctions, to send a message to other claimants, said Chinese military expert Yue Gang, a retired colonel.

"China will take counter-measures to punish the Philippines and that will make other claimants such as Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia to adopt a prudent attitude on the South China Sea issue," Yue said. "The most likely measure China may adopt will be economic sanctions against the Philippines."

"When it comes to the territorial integrity, China has no way to retreat and make concession," Yue said. He added that China could likely establish an air defense identification zone over the South China Sea

Earlier Tuesday in Beijing, ahead of the tribunal's ruling, the European Council's president told Chinese Premier Li Keqiang that in dealing with the South China Sea dispute, it was in the interest of both sides to protect a global order underpinned by rules.

European Council President Donald Tusk, in opening remarks in a meeting with Li on Tuesday, said: "The South China Sea we will see an important ruling today. Therefore let me repeat this: The rule-based international order is in our common interest and both China and the EU have to protect it, as this is in our people's best interest."

Xinhua reported Tuesday that China's government earlier in the day had successfully landed a Cessna CE-680, a midsized business jet, on airstrips on the Mischief and Subi Reefs in the contested Spratlys.

The news of the newly-operating runways — on the day of the Hague arbitration ruling — could be particularly worrisome for the Philippines, which has a contingent of marines stationed roughly 20 miles away at the Second Thomas Shoal and is seeking to drill oil nearby.

Two new runways on Mischief and Subi Reefs, along with a third on Fiery Cross Reef, would form a strategic triangle that would help China consolidate its air patrol capabilities in the Spratlys, according to analysts at the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative.

___

Associated Press researcher Yu Bing contributed to this report.

Why the United States Needs to Join UNCLOS

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/why-the-united-states-needs-join-unclos-16948

The United States should ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of Sea(UNCLOS) in the wake of Manila’s victory over Beijing in The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) says one senior Democratic lawmaker. The United States—which acts as the guarantor of the liberal-institutional world order—is notably absent from the treaty—much to the chagrin of executive branch officials.

“I think this is also important to note today that there was one party notably absent during deliberations in this case: the United States.  As the United States is one of only a few countries that has not yet ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, our representatives were not allowed to participate in the adjudication process,” Rep. Joe Courtney (D-CT), ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee’s (HASC) Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee said in an emailed statement. “Undoubtedly, U.S. interests were not served by the rejection of our request to observe these proceedings. This ruling clearly demonstrates why our nation must finally ratify the Law of the Sea treaty, and I continue to call on the Senate to heed the advice experts and military leaders by approving this treaty without delay.”

Earlier this year in March, Courtney introduced a bipartisan resolution—H. Res. 631—alongside Rep. Don Young (R-AK) calling on the U.S. Senate to finally ratify the UNCLOS treaty. Indeed, many senior Defense Department officials have been privately pleading with lawmakers to ratify the treaty for years.

More recently, the Pentagon’s top military officer in charge of the Pacific suggested that the United States’ must ratify the treaty if the country is to have any credibility on the issue going forward. Admiral Harry B. Harris, Jr., commander of United States Pacific Command, has said that not being a signatory to the UNCLOS opens the United States up to accusations of hypocrisy, it also has an economic impact as Washington cannot press its claim in the Arctic, for example.

“I’m a proponent of it [UNCLOS],” Harris testified before the HASC on Feb. 24. “I think that in the 21st century our moral standing is affected by the fact that we are not a signatory to UNCLOS.”

Trung úy Lê Đức Lam, nhân viên cơ giới trên không

Tối 24/6, Thường vụ Quân ủy Trung ương-Bộ Quốc phòng đã ra thông báo xác nhận 9 quân nhân trên máy bay Casa 212 rơi tại khu vực vịnh Bắc Bộ ngày 16/6 trong khi thực hiện nhiệm vụ đã hy sinh.

·         Video: Hành trình tìm kiếm máy bay CASA 212 gặp nạn

·         Bữa cơm cuối cùng của trung úy Casa 212

·         Bộ Quốc phòng xác nhận 9 quân nhân trên CASA-212 đã hy sinh

Như thế mọi khắc khoải vào – ra, chờ đợi người xa trở về đã không còn nữa. 9 người lính hy sinh 9 hoàn cảnh cuộc đời không giống nhau nhưng nỗi đau chia lìa thì 9 người như 1.

 Trong số 9 quân nhân của Đội bay Casa 212 hy sinh, chuyện của Trung úy Lê Đức Lam, nhân viên cơ giới trên không thuộc Lữ đoàn Không quân vận tải 918 khiến tôi (và chắc có nhiều người nữa) cảm thấy đau xót, ngậm ngùi. Nhà nghèo, để trở thành sĩ quan của lực lượng Không quân, cậu học trò phố Núi Lê Đức Lam phải phấn đấu cật lực suốt mười mấy năm trời để vượt qua muôn ngàn khó khăn, ăn học và trở thành sĩ quan của lực lượng không quân.

Trung uý Lê Đức Lam- Ảnh: QPVN

Năm 2015, Trung úy Lam lập gia đình với cô gái tên Nga xinh đẹp. Đồng lương của anh Trung úy vốn ít ỏi, vợ lại chưa có việc làm ổn định nên cuộc sống luôn thiếu trước hụt sau. Từ khi biết vợ mang thai, Trung úy Lam ky cóp “nuôi heo” để dành tiền cho ngày vợ sinh. Những tưởng cuộc sống đơn sơ của gia đình người sĩ quan trẻ Lê Đức Lam sẽ hạnh phúc hơn khi đón con chào đời trong một vài tháng nữa.

Ngày nhận lệnh lên đường làm nhiệm vụ, Trung úy Lam có ngờ đâu đây là chuyến bay cuối đời mình, anh không chuẩn bị gì hơn cho vợ con ngoài “con heo nhỏ” bụng còn lỏng toẹt kia. Trước ngày bay chuyến bay định mệnh này, Lam khoe với Đại tá Ngô Quang Trung, phụ trách dẫn đường trên không của Phi đội 1, (người mà Lam yêu quý như cha) - 6 tháng qua, Lam “đã nuôi heo được 1,5 triệu đồng” để dành cho “sự kiện” đón đứa con nhỏ bé sẽ chào đời…

Bây giờ, “bố Lam” không về nữa; tới đây Nga sẽ phải vượt cạn một mình với hình bóng chồng trong tâm tưởng – điều mất mát đắng cay này chẳng thể nào thay đổi được. Nhưng giúp em Nga vượt cạn ấm áp hơn, bé con ra đời đủ sữa uống, tôi nghĩ chúng ta có thể làm được.

Đạo lý của người Việt là sẵn sàng đùm bọc nhau những lúc khó khăn, sẻ chia nhau những nỗi buồn đau và chúng ta sẽ làm tiếp điều mà Trung úy Lê Đức Lam làm còn dang dở - sẽ “nuôi heo” thay Lam để vợ con anh vượt cạn đủ đầy; để “bố Lam” không phải khắc khoải đau xót cho vợ dại con thơ còn ở lại, khi anh hy sinh vì nhiệm vụ. Và, một triệu rưỡi tiền “bố Lam” đã ky cóp góp nhặt, đó là ân tình gửi lại, món quà cho con của người lính đã hy sinh giữa thời bình.