When is it all going to stop?
News reports that the Chinese Coast Guard recently challenged personnel of the Western Command (Wescom) of the Armed Forces of the Philippines who were about to conduct a resupply mission and were bringing Christmas packages to troops assigned at the BRP Sierra Madre in Ayungin Shoal indicate that Beijing is actively engaged in gunboat diplomacy in the South China Sea.
This is unacceptable behavior on the part of China, with whom we have a “strategic partnership,” no less, encompassing economic cooperation in the areas of trade and investments and Official Development Assistance as well as close cultural and people-to-people exchanges.
Our Department of Foreign Affairs is therefore on the right track in filing diplomatic protests one after another against such intrusions in the South China Sea that’s part of our Exclusive Economic Zone according to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
China is one of the signatories to UNCLOS, but claims ownership of practically the whole of the vital sealane on the basis of an unfounded “historical right.”
The troops, presumably on board a Navy vessel, were not only subjected to radio challenges from the Chinese Coast Guard but were also shadowed by several other Chinese militia vessels as they were heading for Ayungin Shoal on December 17.
The Chinese also warned Philippine troops not to bring construction materials, saying doing so “will be dealt with,” the report said.
The Chinese Coast Guard said it was “allowing” the supplies to be delivered but also issued radio challenges claiming that the Philippines’ resupply vessel was inside the “jurisdiction of the People’s Republic of China.”
Let us be firm in our stand that Ayungin Shoal is part of the Kalayaan Group of Islands, which is part of Palawan province.
The atoll in the Spratlys Island, some 239 kilometers from Palawan, is being claimed by China as part of its territory.
China first warned the Wescom resupply mission team against bringing construction materials to Ayungin in April this year.
Later, Chinese militia vessels and rubber boats deployed in the area blocked the passage to the entrance of Ayungin Shoal with nets and ropes.
The nets and ropes were removed last May but the Chinese Coast Guard, militia vessels and rubber boats remained in the area, which the AFP considers “an encroachment on our territorial waters and a violation of our sovereign rights.”
What the Wescom did was right, because the resupply mission team did not have to and “never requested permission to conduct resupply and other maritime operations in our territory and EEZ.”
Beijing’s gunboat diplomacy in our EEZ is not only unacceptable but threatens to undermine the ‘strategic partnership’ between our two nations.