Philippines urged to stand with ASEAN vs China

MANILA, Philippines — China’s new law authorizing its coast guard to fire on foreign vessels and destroy other countries’ structures on disputed islands is fair warning for the Philippines to craft a stronger position with ASEAN countries against it, a maritime affairs expert said.

In an interview on “The Chiefs” on One News-Cignal TV on Wednesday, University of the Philippines Institute of Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea director Jay Batongbacal said the diplomatic protest the Philippines filed over the new law is an appropriate means of communication and response to China’s latest maritime law.

“The Philippines should now talk with ASEAN countries first who are similarly situated where China could also claim they are exercising their jurisdiction and therefore implicitly threatening the use of force in their waters. We all have to have the same position. That’s the only way to slow China down on this,” Batongbacal said.

China Coast Guard, he said, is not a civilian service but a military service now authorized to use force in waters that they claim to be under their jurisdiction.

“We know from previous experience in the last three years that they try to exercise their jurisdiction even in waters that are not their own, so it’s a military service carrying out an act of aggression against your ships whether they’re private or public,” he added.

Days after initially saying it is “none of our business,” Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. said on Wednesday that he filed a diplomatic protest with China over its new law authorizing its Coast Guard to fire on foreign vessels and destroy structures in the East China Sea and South China Sea.

In a tweet, Locsin said the new Chinese law “is a verbal threat of war to any country that defies” it and failure to challenge the law “is submission to it.”

Meanwhile, despite verifying the presence of Chinese vessels, including a China coast guard ship in disputed waters, the Armed Forces of the Philippines Western Command (AFP-Westcom) has downplayed claims by a local fisherman that he was blocked from fishing in the West Philippine Sea.

AFP-Westcom spokesman Col. Stephen Penetrante said the alleged harrasment claims made by Chinese vessels near Pag-asa Island were “highly improbable.”

In an interview with dzBB, Penetrante belied claims by fisherman Larry Hugo that he was trailed, blocked and prevented from fishing in an area called sandbar 2, inside the sovereign waters of the country on Jan. 24.

The military official said that on this date, a Chinese coast guard ship and three Chinese fishing vessels were in the area but stationary, according to the automatic identification system used by the AFP.

He encouraged fishermen to continue their fishing activities without fear and coordinate with the AFP for any possible harassment.

The Philippines’ diplomatic protest however won’t affect the purchase of China-made COVID-19 vaccines, Malacañang said yesterday.

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said China’s coast guard law and the vaccine supply deal between Manila and Beijing are two different issues.

“It won’t have an effect because the vaccine is a different issue. The vaccine is actually a humanitarian act of the entire planet Earth in response to a humanitarian disaster,” Roque said at a press briefing. The Philippines is buying 25 million COVID-19 vaccine doses from Chinese drug maker Sinovac.

‘Diplomatic protest a whitewash’

Fisherfolk group Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya) has slammed as a “whitewash” the diplomatic protest that the government has filed against China.

“The Duterte government’s diplomatic protest doesn’t have any merit when it consistently neglects to uphold and impose to China our historical, legal and political claim over the West Philippine Sea,” Pamalakaya national chairperson Fernando Hicap said in a press statement yesterday.

Hicap said the diplomatic protest was merely meant to “whitewash its earlier defeatist statement on the recent Chinese aggression.” He said the protest was useless if the government would not assert its maritime rights over parts of the South China Sea as affirmed by the arbitral tribunal.

He was referring to the July 12, 2016 ruling of the Hague-based International Permanent Court of Arbitration favoring the Philippines’ legal claim over parts of the contested South China Sea.

At the Senate, Sen. Richard Gordon commended Locsin for filing diplomatic complaints against China’s aggression.

“When another country claims the oceans surrounding us, which we claim, even threatens to demolish our fishing boats or fishing boats of any country that get to that ocean or that sea, this is a serious cause for concern. This is a shot in the bow of all the claimants in the territories,” said Gordon. – Romina Cabrera, Alexis Romero, Elizabeth Marcelo, Cecille Suerte Felipe