Category World News

The United States has rejected China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, drawing an angry response from Beijing, which said Washington was trying to inflame tensions in the disputed waters.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday there was no legal basis for China’s claims on the Sea and accused Beijing of using intimidatory tactics against other claimant states.

“We are making clear: Beijing’s claims to offshore resources across most of the South China Sea are completely unlawful, as is its campaign of bullying to control them,” Pompeo said in a statement.

“The world will not allow Beijing to treat the South China Sea as its maritime empire.”

In response, the Chinese embassy in the US described the announcement as “completely unjustified” and accused Washington of inciting confrontation.

“Under the pretext of preserving stability, (the US) is flexing muscles, stirring up tension and inciting confrontation in the region.”

The relationship between the US and China has become increasingly tense in recent months over the coronavirus pandemic – the US is now the world’s worst-affected country – and over China’s actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. 

China claims almost all of the South China Sea under its self-proclaimed “nine-dash line”, which would give it about nine-tenths of the 3.5-million square kilometre sea.

Five other governments claim all or part of the sea – the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan – through which approximately $5 trillion in goods are shipped every year.

UN-backed arbitration

Previously, US policy had been to urge a peaceful resolution to the dispute through UN-backed arbitration, but the statement suggests a hardening of Washington’s position.

“America stands with our Southeast Asian allies and partners in protecting their sovereign rights to offshore resources, consistent with their rights and obligations under international law. We stand with the international community in defence of freedom of the seas and respect for sovereignty and reject any push to impose ‘might makes right’ in the South China Sea or the wider region,” Pompeo said.

#US Rejects All Major #Chinese Claims in the #SouthChinaSea 👍

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statement: pic.twitter.com/kxg9alfZpN

— Indo-Pacific News (@IndoPac_Info) July 13, 2020

Although the US will remain neutral in territorial disputes, the announcement suggests the Trump administration is in effect siding with the littoral states, all of which oppose Chinese assertions of sovereignty over maritime areas surrounding contested islands, reefs and shoals.

“There are clear cases where [China] is claiming sovereignty over areas that no country can lawfully claim,” the US Department of State said in a fact sheet that accompanied Pompeo’s statement.

The announcement was released a day after the fourth anniversary of a binding decision by an arbitration panel in favour of the Philippines and rejecting China’s maritime claims around the Spratly Islands and neighbouring reefs and shoals.

And yet, there they are. Two @USNavy aircraft carriers operating in the international waters of the South China Sea. #USSNimitz & #USSRonaldReagan are not intimidated #AtOurDiscretion https://t.co/QGTggRjOul

— Navy Chief of Information (@chinfo) July 5, 2020

China has refused to participate in the arbitration proceedings or to recognise the decision, dismissing it as a “sham”.

Beijing has sought to shore up its claim to the Sea by building military bases on coral atolls, and has continued to defy the arbitration panel’s decision with aggressive actions that have brought it into regular disputes with Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia.

While the US has no claims itself to the waters, it has deployed warships and aircraft for decades to patrol and promote freedom of navigation and overflight in the busy waterway.

Words vs action

In addition to reiterating support for the arbitration panel’s decision, Pompeo said China has no valid maritime claims to the fish- and potentially energy-rich Scarborough Reef, Mischief Reef or Second Thomas Shoal. The US has repeatedly said areas regarded as part of the Philippines are covered by a US-Philippines mutual defence treaty in the event of an attack on them.

He also said China cannot legally claim the James Shoal near Malaysia, waters surrounding the Vanguard Bank off Vietnam, the Luconia Shoals near Brunei and Natuna Besar off Indonesia. As such, Pompeo said the US would regard any Chinese harassment of fishing vessels or oil exploration in those areas as unlawful.

Philippines presidential spokesman Harry Roque said claims in the region should be resolved according to the Convention. “Our position here is we will pursue our national interest and resolving the South China Sea will have to be in accordance with the law,” he said.

Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry’s welcomed the US statement and called for Taiwan’s inclusion in a multilateral dispute mechanism. “Our country opposes any attempt by a claimant state to use intimidation, coercion, or force to resolve disputes in the South China Sea,” spokeswoman Joanne Ou told reporters.

Malaysia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday said it had no immediate comment to make on the US statement.

In Beijing, Zhao Lijian, spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, called Pompeo’s statement “irresponsible”.

“It frequently dispatched large-scale advanced warships and military aircraft to the South China Sea that militarised the region and promoted power logic and hegemony. The US is the destructor and troublemaker to peace and stability in the region,” he told reporters.

Regional analysts say it is crucial to see whether other countries follow the US stance and what Washington will do to support its more assertive position.

“This is basically the first time we have called it illegitimate,” Chris Johnson, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, told Reuters news agency. “It’s fine to put out a statement, but what are you going to do about it?”

Last week, China angrily complained about the US flexing its military muscle in the disputed sea by conducting exercises with two US aircraft carrier groups.

Malian authorities have freed some 20 political opponents arrested by the security forces during a wave of deadly protests calling for President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita to resign.

Their release on Monday is an apparent bid by Keita to calm tensions sparked by the outcome of a long-delayed parliamentary poll, but whose underlying causes include discontent over his handling of armed groups in Mali. The 75-year-old has been in power since 2013.

Mali’s capital Bamako remains tense after a rally on Friday turned violent, with security forces reportedly firing live rounds and tear gas to disperse protesters, who blocked bridges, stormed the premises of the state broadcaster, and attacked the parliament building.

At least 11 people have died, and nearly 150 others have been wounded since Friday, according to a hospital official in Bamako, where the clashes continued over the weekend and Monday, with much of the tension focused in the opposition-supporting Badalabougou neighbourhood.

The well-off neighbourhood is a stronghold of influential imam Mahmoud Dicko, who has emerged as a leader of the worst civil unrest the country has seen in years.

The demonstrations are being driven by the M5-RFP, a disparate group of religious leaders, political and civil society members calling for “civil disobedience”, including non-payment of fines and blocking entry to state buildings.

On Monday, the M5-RFP said 20 people had been killed since Friday, but Mali’s health ministry confirmed 11 deaths.

The M5-RFP has rejected concessions offered by Keita as insufficient, including his offer to dissolve the constitutional court.

Monday’s clashes came after the UN mission in Mali, the African Union, West African regional bloc ECOWAS and the EU jointly criticised Malian authorities for their response to the protests.

The organisations “condemn the use of lethal force in the context of maintaining public order and invite all stakeholders to exercise restraint”, they said in a statement late on Sunday.

The former French colony has struggled to contain an armed rebellion that first emerged in the north in 2012 before spreading to the centre of the country and to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Bejon Misra responded quickly to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appeal in March for donations to a new fund to strengthen the country’s fight against the coronavirus.

The next day, the 69-year-old retired management professor made a donation. “It was a generous contribution because Modi is the face of it,” Misra said.

Such trust in Modi is common in India, the prime minister enjoying a very high approval rating, despite coronavirus infections spiking in recent weeks.

India on Tuesday recorded more than 28,000 cases for the second consecutive day, taking the tally to 906,752, according to the country’s health ministry. More than 23,000 people have died from COVID-19.

So when the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund, or PM CARES, was launched days after India started a countrywide virus lockdown in March, donations began pouring in and have not stopped.

Retirees like Misra, industrialists, Bollywood stars and foreign companies have all pitched in. But the fund, now valued at more than $1bn, has run into controversy over issues of transparency and accountability.

PM office denies fund information

The Associated Press requested a list of donors and payments from Modi’s office under the Right to Information Law, which entitles citizens to access information from India’s often opaque bureaucracy. The request was denied.

Modi’s office, which manages PM CARES, has refused to disclose the information, arguing that even though it is administered by the Indian government, the fund is not a public authority and therefore is not subject to right-to-information laws.

As a result, there is little transparency about the money the fund is receiving and spending in the middle of India’s still-raging virus outbreak.

“It’s not a state secret, and the government must answer the questions that are being raised,” said Saket Gokhale, an independent activist who was one of the first to question the fund. “They are stonewalling.”

Legal experts are challenging the response by Modi’s office.

Surender Singh Hooda, a lawyer at India’s top court, filed a petition on June 5, arguing that the fund’s website must display details of the money received and how it is used.

The Delhi high court told Hooda to withdraw his petition and contact Modi’s office first, as required by law.
Modi’s office denied Hooda’s request for information.

“The money has been collected under the name of the prime minister, and millions of ordinary citizens have donated to it. The least we expect is some transparency,” Hooda said.

Modi is the fund’s chairman, while the powerful Home Minister Amit Shah, as well as the ministers of defence and finance sit on its board.

The ventilators ‘scam’

But unlike other government-administered funds, this is not audited by India’s Comptroller and Auditor General.

Instead, Modi appointed a private business consulting firm, SARC & Associates, to audit the fund 12 days after it donated $212,665 to it.

Sunil Kumar Gupta, head of SARC & Associates, has been a vocal supporter of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, appearing in photographs with Modi and top party leaders at various events.

Gupta also wrote a book in 2018 about “Make in India”, Modi’s project to increase manufacturing and domestic consumption of Indian-made products.

“On what merit was this private company, which is so close to Modi’s party, given the job to audit the fund?” asked Gokhale. “It’s shady, and the activities are very suspect.”

Gupta declined requests for comment.

Modi’s party colleagues have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing by the fund. Party spokesperson Nalin Kohli said it was “transparent” and was helping India fight the virus.

PM CARES has also run into other controversies.

After Modi’s office said it had spent $26m from the fund to buy 50,000 ventilators, two top hospitals in Mumbai and New Delhi described shortcomings in the products and concluded they were prone to failure.

The company that made the ventilators rejected the findings.

The main opposition Congress party called the ventilator purchase a scam.

About $13m from the fund was allocated for impoverished migrant workers, millions of whom were stranded without work or transportation home during the two-month countrywide lockdown. Many say the allocation came too late.

Modi’s party said the $13m was given to state governments to provide food, shelter, medical treatment and transportation for the migrants.

Former Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, a Congress party member, was critical that the money did not directly “go to the hands of the migrant workers”.

Others see the fund as a thinly veiled marketing device for the prime minister.

The latest round of negotiations between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia over the latter’s contentious dam on the Blue Nile has ended with no agreement, according to Egyptian and Sudanese officials.

“All of the efforts exerted to reach a solution didn’t come to any kind of result,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said on Monday in an interview with Egypt’s DMC TV channel.

The failure sank modest hopes the three countries could resolve their differences and sign an agreement on the dam’s operation before Ethiopia begins to fill the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), set to be Africa’s largest.

Addis Ababa had previously pledged to start storing water in the dam’s vast reservoir at the start of the wet season in July, when rains flood the Blue Nile.

The bitter dispute pits Ethiopia’s desire to supply electricity to a significant portion of its population that lacks it and to become a major power exporter by selling its surplus, against downstream Egypt’s concern that the colossal dam will significantly curtail its water supply if filled too quickly.

Egypt, which is almost entirely dependent on the Nile for its fresh-water supplies, sees the project as a potentially existential threat. It is anxious to secure a legally binding deal that would guarantee minimum flows and a mechanism for resolving disputes before the dam starts operating.

For its part, Sudan stands to benefit from the project through access to cheap electricity and reduced flooding, but it has also raised fears over the dam’s operation, which could endanger its own smaller dams, depending on the amount of water discharged downstream daily.

Years of talks with a variety of mediators have failed to produce a solution, with the latest round – mediated by the African Union (AU) and observed by US and European officials – proving no different.

The three countries agreed they would send their reports to the AU president and reconvene in a week to determine next steps.

There was no immediate comment from Ethiopia on the talks.

Filling the GERD without a deal would sharply escalate tensions, with observers fearing it could push the countries to the brink of military conflict.

Shoukry warned that Egypt might be compelled to appeal again to the UN Security Council to intervene in the dispute, a prospect Ethiopia rejects, preferring that regional bodies such as the AU mediate.

“If there is something that threatens the regional security of Egypt and international security, it is the main responsibility of the Security Council to adopt procedures that will prevent this,” he said.

In a press conference on Monday, Sudanese Irrigation Minister Yasser Abbas outlined a series of sticking points.

While the parties were “keen to find a solution”, technical and legal disagreements persist over the filling and operation of the dam, he said. Most important, he said, are the unresolved questions of how much water Ethiopia will release downstream if a multi-year drought occurs, and how the countries will resolve any future disputes.

Hisham Kahin, a member of Sudan’s legal committee in the dam negotiations, said 70-80 percent of negotiations turned on the thorny question of whether an agreement would be legally binding.

Ethiopia, he said, fears a binding agreement will hinder its future development projects. Sudan and Egypt consider it critical.