IT IS comforting the United States, a defense treaty ally of the Philippines, has called on China to stop “coercive actions” in the West Philippine Sea while Manila itself is thinking of filing yet another diplomatic protest over this week’s incident.
This happened after a Chinese military helicopter flew within three meters of a Philippine patrol aircraft over Scarborough Shoal, well within the Philippines’ 200-mile exclusive economic zone but China claims sovereignty over it.
We agree with the Philippine Coast Guard in its belief this is among China’s most provocative action since the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration adjudicating the Philippine case against China in the South China Sea ruled overwhelmingly in favor of the Philippines.
The arbitral tribunal ruled in favor of the Philippines in 2016 in the case over Scarborough Shoal, stressing UNCLOS, or the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, supersedes any historic rights or other sovereign rights
UNCLOS is an international agreement that establishes rules for using the world’s oceans and seas, known also as the “law of the sea convention” or the “Constitution of the oceans.”
“We condemn the dangerous maneuvers by a PLA Navy helicopter that endangered pilots and passengers on a Philippine air mission,” US Ambassador to the Philippines MaryKay Carlson said in an X post in mid week.
“We call on China to refrain from coercive actions and settle its disputes peacefully in accordance with international law,” the US’ ambassador added.
Manila has announced it would file another diplomatic protest – the number of such protests, ignored and obviously regarded with contempt by the country’s giant neighbor – over the mid-air encounter, where a PLA Navy helicopter flew above a Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Cessna aircraft while it was patrolling in the West Philippine Sea.
There have been previous incidents, including but not limited to one in August last year when the Philippines said two Chinese Air Force planes dropped flares in the path of a Philippine Air Force plane over Scarborough Shoal.
The incident occurred as Washington reiterated its commitments to Manila under the Mutual Defense Treaty signed in 1951, which recognizes that an attack in the Pacific on either would endanger the peace of both and thus act in concert to meet the common danger.
Only last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo discussed China’s “destabilizing actions in the South China Sea” among other topics in their first in-person meeting during the Munich Security Conference in Germany.
We wonder what China would do again when that diplomatic protest is filed, how it would respond to the condemnation by the United States.
But we know the world cannot be asleep forever.
