The Philippine government expressed serious concern as it refuted and condemned a reported claim of Chinese scholars that Batanes belongs to China.

"We view with serious concern reports that Chinese scholars are advancing the notion that Batanes belongs to China. There is no ambiguity on this matter: Batanes is an integral and indivisible part of the Republic of the Philippines," the National Security Council said in a statement on Friday.

"Batanes is, and will always remain, an integral and indivisible part of the Republic of the Philippines. There is no dispute to settle, no claim to negotiate, and no ambiguity to resolve," it added.

Rep. Ciriaco Gato Jr. of the Lone District of Batanes also expressed "grave concern" over the claims made during an academic symposium in China asserting that Batanes is a natural geographical extension of Taiwan with sovereignty belonging to China.

"Batanes is a province of the Republic of the Philippines. The Ivatans are Filipinos. These are enduring truths established by history, affirmed by our Constitution and laws, and embodied in the identity and collective experience of our people," said Gato.

"We treat any insinuation that seeks to question or undermine the absolute sovereignty of the Republic of the Philippines over our islands with utmost gravity. Any challenge to our status is not merely a geopolitical provocation; it is an affront to our identity that we will not tolerate," he added.

Denouncing the claim of the Chinese scholars, the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) emphasized that the "current satellite and oceanographic data by the Philippines and other nations clearly show a continuous shelf extending from Northern Luzon through the Babuyan & Batanes Islands, and into parts of the Taiwan archipelago. The Philippines claims a greater right over the subject territories from this perspective."

The NHCP also stressed that the earliest known extensive documentation of the Batanes Islands by British explorer William Dampier in 1687 noted no trace of Chinese governance over the islands.

"The natives of Batanes, the Ivatan people, lived in protected communities and traded with other maritime trading nations. This is clear in the archeological and historical evidence produced by more than a hundred years of research," it stated.

"Since 1783, the Philippine government and its legal predecessors have held continuous and undisputed sovereignty over Batanes. The Spanish Empire, which had already imposed its sovereignty over the rest of the Philippine archipelago near the Batanes Islands, formally claimed them as part of the Province of Cagayan in 1783," it added.

The NHCP said that "during the 1896 Philippine Revolution and the First Philippine Republic, Batanes was already recognized as an integral part of our country’s territory with Ivatans rising up once again and claiming independence against the Spanish."

"They were represented in the Malolos Congress and every subsequent iteration of our national legislature. They have an elected government, one that is recognized by the whole world as Filipino," the commission stressed.

On the claim that the Batanes Islands were part of the territory that was to be returned to China by Japan following the end of the Second World War, the NHCP noted "Japan cannot give to China what clearly belongs to the Philippines".

"Furthermore, the people of Batanes had already liberated themselves from Japanese rule by early 1945. This only proves beyond any doubt that Batanes has always been Filipino," it added. Robina Asido/PHS