(VOVworld) - The Netherlands-based Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) on November 24 began hearing a case filed by the Philippines contesting China’s sovereignty claims in the East Sea.
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| The alleged on-going land reclamation of China at the Subi reef is seen from Pagasa island in the South China Sea. (photo: Reuters) |
Singapore's Strait Times reports that in a note sent from The Hague, President Benigno Aquino's deputy spokesman Abigail Valte said that the Philippines’ lawyer Paul Reichler argued that China's "purported historic rights" over the strategic waterway "do not exist" under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
Another lawyer for the Philippines, Andrew Loewenstein, said China failed to satisfy the requirements to establish its claims. He argued that China had not been in "exclusive control for a long period of time" over the East Sea. He presented eight maps, one dating back to the Ming Dynasty, that showed the areas covered by China's nine-dash line had never been considered Chinese territories, untill now.
The hearings in The Hague is set to last till November 30.