FOREIGN Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. on Wednesday ordered his department to fire off another diplomatic protest after China reiterated its claim over the West Philippine Sea (WPS) and warned the country’s Coast Guard and Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) to stop their joint maritime exercises.
“Have we fired off a diplomatic protest? Do it now,” Locsin ordered.
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“They can say what they want from the Chinese mainland; we continue to assert from our waters by right of international law what we won in The Hague. But we must not fail to protest,” Secretary Locsin tweeted, in reference to the 2016 ruling favoring Manila in the Permanent Court of Arbitration.
The latest round of note verbale is the 80th the Philippines has filed against China, including the daily protests that the DFA vowed to make until all of China’s blue-hulled maritime militia vessels have left the WPS.
On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana repeated his warning to China to pull out its boats from the WPS, as the National Task Force on the WPS reported that nine vessels remained in the area.
On Tuesday, Ivy Banson-Abalos, executive director, DFA Strategic Communication’s Office said 79 diplomatic notes have been filed since President Duterte assumed office.
“China enjoys sovereignty over Nansha [Spratly] Islands including Zhongye [Thitu] Island and Zhongsha Islands including Huangyan Island [Scarborough Shoal] and their adjacent waters, and exercises jurisdiction in relevant waters,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in a press briefing on Monday.
Last month, the US Embassy announced that: “We stand with the Philippines, our oldest treaty ally in Asia.” Pentagon spokesman Ned Price similarly declared: “An armed attack against the Philippines’s armed forces, public vessels or aircraft in the Pacific, including the South China Sea, will trigger our obligations under the US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty.”
In mid-April the two governments held annual military exercises which were dropped last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Also, the US Defense Department announced that Secretary Lloyd Austin—in a phone call to his counterpart, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana—had “proposed several measures to deepen defense cooperation between the United States and the Philippines, including by enhancing situational awareness of threats in the South China Sea.”
Image courtesy of DFA-ASEAN
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