PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte has banned all foreign scientific exploration on a vast undersea plateau claimed by Manila, his spokesman said Tuesday, now that China has completed its research there.
Authorities announced three weeks ago that the President had allowed China to conduct research at Benham Rise off the country’s Pacific coast, despite the two nations’ decades-old maritime disputes elsewhere in the region.
Duterte spokesman Harry Roque said the President ordered an end to all foreign research in the area at a Cabinet meeting Monday after Chinese scientists completed their expedition.
“The President ordered that henceforth only Filipinos will be allowed to conduct scientific research… and explore and exploit for natural resources in the Philippine Rise,” Roque told reporters, using the local name for the area.
The 13-million-hectare underwater land mass, believed to be rich in maritime resources, lies 250 kilometers off the east coast of Luzon.
In 2012, the United Nations recognized the Philippines’ exclusive economic rights to Benham Rise as part of its continental shelf.
Roque added that all other foreign research permits were now revoked, including 26 issued to US, Japanese, and South Korean organizations.
Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol added that Duterte had directed the Philippine Navy to “chase out” any foreign vessels fishing or conducting research in the area.
The move banning foreign research comes as Duterte faced fresh criticism for failing to stop China’s militarization of artificial islands built by Beijing over reefs and rocks in the South China Sea.
Opposition politicians and legal experts alleged this was tantamount to giving up Philippine territory.
“The President does not kowtow to any other country,” Roque said Tuesday.
China and the Philippines have had a long-running dispute over competing claims in the South China Sea to the west of Luzon. Parts of the waterway are also claimed by Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam.
Duterte’s predecessor, President Benigno Aquino III, had forcefully challenged China in diplomatic and legal circles over the South China Sea dispute, but Duterte has changed course since he was elected in mid-2016 in a bid for billions of dollars worth of Chinese investment.
At the Palace briefing, Roque said ships would be entitled to freedom of navigation through the area but nobody but Filipinos would be able to conduct research lay submarine cables and explore and exploit the national resources there.
He also said that the President enjoined all members of the Cabinet to refer to the area as Philippine Rise and not as Benham Rise, since it is part of the Philippine territory.
“Let me be very clear about this: the Philippine Rise is ours and any insinuation that it is open to everybody should end with this declaration,” Piñol said, quoting Duterte at the start of the Cabinet meeting in Malacañang on Monday.
The President also directed the Department of National Defense to deploy Navy vessels and the Air Force to conduct flyovers in the area to check for the presence of foreign vessels.
Earlier, Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio said the Philippines could disallow China from carrying out research in the Philippine Rise because it did not comply with the international tribunal’s ruling on the West Philippine Sea.
In 2016, the Philippines won its case before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in The Netherlands, which ruled that China had no legal basis “to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the nine-dash line.”
China, which claims most of the South China Sea, did not heed the tribunal’s ruling. With AFP