Lie fails to fool anyone

A rock is a rock is a rock, no matter what you call it.

Since the 1980s, Japan has been making painstaking efforts to turn a couple of rocks, some 1,700 kilometers from Tokyo, into an island.

It has spent a great deal of money building up the rocks that can barely be seen in high waters into what it calls "Okinotori Island". It has even constructed a lighthouse, in a bid to make it look like a real island and it plans to create a port this year on what it is trying to claim is its "southernmost island".

Japan's intention is obvious: If it can successfully convince the rest of the world that the rocks are an island, the country will then be able to claim the surrounding area as its exclusive economic zone.

This is a big deal as we are talking about the jurisdiction over a marine area of some 700,000 square kilometers.

But lies have short legs. Japan's claim of an outer continental shelf based on Okinotori Atoll was not acknowledged by the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, which means Japan cannot call the atoll an island.

In fact, if Japan had looked at the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea it would have realized its bid was absurd and doomed to failure.

Article 121 says that rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. And according to Article 60, artificial islands, installations and structures do not possess the status of islands. They have no territorial sea of their own, and their presence does not affect the delimitation of the territorial sea, the exclusive economic zone or the continental shelf.

By claiming rights over the atoll's surrounding area, Tokyo would gravely damage the interests of the international community as a whole, as the move would shrink international waters and hamper freedom of navigation.

Japan must give up its selfish attempt and abide by international law.

(China Daily 05/18/2012 page8)