SAD is the reality that in the Supreme Court, only Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio is man enough to remind the President that China has no right to fish at the Recto Bank because it is within Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the West Philippine Sea, within 200 nautical miles from Palawan.
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), ratified by 167 states including China, entitles coastal states to an EEZ.
The June 9, 2019 “maritime incident” that nearly drowned 22 Filipino fishermen on board a fishing vessel rammed by a bigger Chinese boat is no isolated case of China’s adventurism in Philippine territory.
It violated the July 2016 ruling of a United Nations-backed Arbitral Tribunal which declared several areas in the West Philippine Sea (WPS) part of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of the Philippines.
The court therefore rejected Beijing’s historic claims to most of the WPS, acting on the case brought by former President Benigno Aquino III after a standoff between Chinese coast guard ships and a Philippine naval vessel in the Scarborough Shoal.
“We’re the owners of the resources there,” Carpio lamented. “There is no legal dispute as to the ownership of oil, fish, and gas. It belongs exclusively to the Philippines. The only problem is how to get China to comply.”
President Rodrigo Duterte, however, set the decision aside as he distanced the Philippines from its traditional ally, the United States, and embraced China while seeking financial and military aid.
The Philippine Naval Forces West (NFW), nevertheless, recently bared that more than 50 Chinese vessels have been cited near the same area since the “maritime incident”.
But as current news reports articulate, President Duterte would not want to drive away Chinese fishermen from Philippine waters because of a supposed agreement between him and Chinese President Xi Jinping to allow fishing rights for both their peoples.
One recalls that when United States’ Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Manila on Feb. 28 this year, he reminded President Duterte that since South China Sea – or West Philippine Sea to us — is part of the Pacific, any armed attack on Philippine forces would activate the Mutual Defense Treaty (MTD) of 1951, which would alert both parties to act against an armed attack in the Pacific area.
An updated version of the MTD emerged in the form of Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), a 10-year agreement signed by then US ambassador Philip Goldberg and Defense secretary Voltaire Gazmin during the meeting in Manila between then Presidents Barack Obama and Benigno Simeon Aquino in April 2014. It was, and still is, aimed at giving the US military greater access to Philippine bases as deterrent to “bullying” by foreign powers.
Obama stressed, “Our goal is not to counter China. Our goal is not to contain China. Our goal is to make sure international rules and norms are respected and that includes in the area of international disputes.”
Alas, however, five years since then, China has taken effective control of Scarborough Shoal, the Spratlys and other territories that used to be rich fishing grounds for Filipino fishermen.
China, on the other hand, has made it clear that it will not tolerate the threat to its security represented by a foreign military presence at its gates when these foreign forces are engaged in activities designed to probe Chinese defenses and choreograph a way to penetrate them.
Are we Filipinos realistic in assessing ourselves as still “sovereign” when we are now at the mercy of China? (hvego31@gmail.com /PN)
