What is Beijing up to?
Should we believe the claim of the Chinese government that three Filipinos who had been arrested by authorities were suspected spies?
The suspected spies were identified as David Servañez, Albert Endencia and Nathalie Plizardo. Servañez was the first to be arrested in October 2024, followed by Endencia in January this year and Plizardo in February. The arrests were first publicly disclosed by Chinese state media outlets on April 3.
The three alleged spies are actually former scholars under a “sisterhood” agreement between Palawan and Hainan, China’s southernmost province, in 2017.
Plizardo and Servañez belonged to the first batch of scholars at Hainan Normal University in 2018 and Endencia followed in the second batch in 2019.
The National Security Council has vehemently denied Beijing’s allegations the three Filipinos arrested in China were spies, saying they were ordinary citizens who had no military training, and doubted their alleged “confessions” had been made freely.
Jonathan Malaya, NSC Assistant Director General and spokesperson, is on the right track in expressing alarm over Chinese allegations the three were arrested for allegedly spying for a Philippine intelligence agency.
“They are ordinary Filipino citizens with no military training who merely went to China at the invitation of the Chinese government to study,” Malaya said, adding they were vetted and screened by the Chinese government itself prior to granting them scholarships.
The NSC should continue to coordinate closely with the DFA and the Philippine Embassy in Beijing to ensure the three detained Filipinos receive legal support and are accorded due process considering the gravity of the accusations against them.
Chinese media reports still have not disclosed where the three Filipinos were arrested and where they are being detained.
The NSC believes that given the scarce information available from China, the arrests could be “retaliation for the series of legitimate arrests of Chinese agents and accomplices by Philippine law enforcement and counterintelligence agencies in recent months.”
In February, Philippine authorities arrested five suspected Chinese spies who were allegedly monitoring Philippine Coast Guard and Philippine Navy activities in Palawan province, including the resupply of troops in the West Philippine Sea.
Earlier, authorities also arrested a Chinese national and his two Filipino cohorts in Makati City.
The National Bureau of Investigation said they were allegedly engaged in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations “to the prejudice of our national defense” and had been charged with espionage and with violation of Republic Act 10175, or the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012.
Beijing should stop pulling the wool over our eyes and tell us the truth.
The allegation the three Filipinos are spies seems to be part of its cognitive warfare operations.
The difference is that the Filipinos are hapless victims of an underhanded plot by the Chinese government while those nabbed by our authorities have been caught in flagrante delicto and deserve long prison terms once convicted by our judicial system.