Questions of neutrality: China takes aim at judges in South China Sea case
Chinese officials and media have questioned the neutrality of judges handling the South China Sea case initiated by the Philippines.
Fire has been focused on the person who picked the arbitrators – Japanese judge Shunji Yanai, who has been branded a “rightist” and “unfriendly to China”.
Foreign Vice-minister Liu Zhenmin questioned the “procedural justice” of the appointment and the operation of the tribunal in an article published in the Communist Party mouthpiece magazine Qiushi last Monday.
China has refused to take part in the proceedings, and in its absence, four of the five arbitrators were appointed by Yanai, who at the time the case was filed in 2013 was president of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), established under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The other one was named by the Philippines.
Liu said Yanai should have avoided involvement given the territorial and maritime disputes between China and Japan in the East China Sea, and Tokyo’s attempts to involve itself in the South China Sea issue.