A SO-CALLED monster ship belonging to the China Coast Guard — vessel 5901 — has been spotted off the Zambales coast. Experts believe that the vessel is meant to project China’s force in order to intimidate local fisherfolk and the Philippine Coast Guard.
The Executive Secretary said the Palace sees the presence of the ship in our Exclusive Economic Zone “with concern.”
In response, the Philippines challenged the presence of the CCG in our EEZ, which is protected by the Philippine Maritime Zones Law and the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea. Our BRP Cabra (MRRV-4409) and a PCG aircraft are still monitoring the foreign vessel. Tuesday marked the third consecutive day of the Chinese ship’s illegal presence in our waters.
The ship did not do any aggressive action, nor carried out dangerous maneuvers, Commodore Jay Tarriela, PCG spokesperson, said. It moved away when BRP Cabra moved closer to it.
But the mere presence of the monster vessel is an aggressive and dangerous act by a foreign power. Over the past years, China employed a combination of ways to try and assert its presence on what has been established legally as Philippine waters.
The aggressive and dangerous acts have also spilled over into the digital realm, with the Department of Information and Communications Technology confirming that several agencies in the Executive branch have been experiencing persistent cyberattacks from groups that could be associated with China.
Among the agencies, the DICT said, were the Office of the President, the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources, and the PCG.
The sophisticated attacks, the DICT said, were persistent in the sense that if they were blocked from one site, they continued attempting to attack yet another database. These are likely being carried out by well-learned and well-organized teams who have sufficient technology, knowledge, and sufficient time.
The Philippines is not new to intimidation by foreign powers; this recent spate of China’s antics in the West Philippine Sea, as well as cyberattack attempts by groups with signatures similar to China’s, show us that the ways in which a country’s sovereignty and integrity could be threatened in numerous different ways.
The “concern” mentioned by the Executive Secretary must translate to consistently firm and uncompromising action by our government. We are a peace-loving, diplomatic nation, sure, but it does not mean we will take all these actions simply hoping for the best. We believe that we can see through the other country’s intentions, and thus our responses should be as calculated and firm as they are rational and in accordance with the law.
Whatever the alignments are in the international scene, the fact is that our territory is being threatened, our fisherfolk are being harassed and prevented from making their livelihood, and our integrity as a nation is being trampled on. The logical response thus is to protect our own, and be vigilant of the many monstrous and minute, the glaring and the insidious, ways in which our nationhood is undermined.
