WE ARE holding our breath behind the blinds as the National Maritime Council convenes this week to discuss the national government’s response to China’sharrasing behavior in the West Philippine Sea.
The Council, chaired by Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, will convene any day to discuss the national government’s response to the dangerous maneuvers and dropping of flares by two People’s Liberation Army Air Force aircraft against a Philippine Air Force propeller aircraft during a routine maritime patrol over Bajo de Masinloc, a ring-shaped coral reef also known as Panatag Shoal or Scarborough Shoal.
The Philippines claims the northeastern section of the Spratly Islands as the Kalayaan Island Group, in addition to the Scarborough Shoal it calls Bajo de Masinloc, 120 nautical miles from the Luzon shoreline and is clearly within the Philippines’ 200-mile exclusive economic zone, and is 594 nautical miles from China’s Hainan island.
Malaysia claims part of the Kalayaan Island, while China and Taiwan claim the entirety of the island group.
On Sunday, President Ferdinand Marcos called China’s actions “unjustified, illegal and reckless.”
Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. said he expects China’s harassment of aerial patrols by the Armed Forces of the Philippines in the West Philippine Sea to be a “continuous pattern.”
Teodoro said the National Maritime Council “will consider these things…this continuous pattern that China will do against us…this continuous struggle for presence and for assertion of sovereign rights in the area so you will have to expect these things to happen.”
He said the national government cannot afford to do nothing, even if it means another diplomatic protest should be filed against China, lest the public see this as the administration’s acquiescence to China, adding the latest incursion by China in the airspace of the Philippines can be considered a violation of the Filipino people’s rights.
We agree with Teodoro when he admitted such incursion is a violation of the rights of the Filipino fisherfolk to earn a livelihood and a violation of the future generation of Filipinos “to the sovereign right under the exclusive economic zone, and perhaps the extended continental shelf.”
But Teodoro hoped China would comply with international law and on the need to de-escalate tensions.
While the latest agreement between the Philippines and China only covers de-escalating tensions during resupply missions to BRP Sierra Madre in Ayungin Shoal, Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Teresita Daza said the Philippines adopts a “de-escalatory approach to tensions in the WPS.”
“The Philippines remains committed to diplomacy and peaceful means of resolving disputes,” Daza said in a statement.
