A retired Supreme Court justice and a former diplomat have urged the government to lodge a diplomatic protest against China for establishing two districts in Hainan province.
Former Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio and former Ambassador Albert del Rosario said the province would have territorial jurisdiction over the disputed South China Sea where the Philippines and neighboring Southeast Asia nations have overlapping claims.
Carpio and Del Rosario played vital roles in securing a historic judgment against China at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016.
“DFA (Department of Foreign Affairs) should protest because Fiery Cross (Kagitingan) Reef is part of our Kalayaan Island Group. Vietnam already protested. If we do not protest, China will later claim we acquiesced,” Carpio said.
Del Rosario shared Carpio’s sentiments, saying: "We therefore respectfully urge our government to protest this recent action of China, as it rightly did over the sinking of the Vietnamese fishing boat on April 8, 2020."
Del Rosario also bewailed China for taking advantage the coronavirus disease pandemic to advance what he called its illegal territorial claims in the heavily disputed waters.
"These recent events in the South China Sea remind us Filipinos to be eternally vigilant in the defense of our country’s territory and sovereign rights even as we confront a very grave threat as COVID-19," the country’s former top diplomat said in a statement.
The former officials made the statements following reports that China has created two new districts in Sansha, a city in the southern island of Hainan province.
The reports said these new districts would govern the Paracels and Macclesfield Bank, both being claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan, as well as the Spratly Islands and their adjacent waters, where there are overlapping claims by the Philippines and other neighboring Asian nations.
"These show that China has been relentless in exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic as it continues to pursue its illegal and expansive claims in the South China Sea to the prejudice of Filipinos, the ASEAN states and the international community as a whole," Del Rosario lamented.
"As we struggle against a pandemic that poses a real threat to our lives, we must not also risk losing our national patrimony upheld by international law and meant for present and future generations of Filipinos," he said.
Despite the landmark arbitral ruling rendered by the PCA in 2016, which invalidated China’s nine-dash-line claims and upheld the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone over the West Philippine Sea, China continues its expansionism in the South China Sea, transforming several former reefs into artificial islands with military facilities, runways, and surface to air missiles.
Beijing has been seen by diplomatic and political observers to have been violating the Declaration on Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea that was agreed to by China and ASEAN members in 2002.
China, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan are locked in decades-long territorial conflict in the South China Sea, where oil and gas deposits have been discovered in several areas.
