Marcos defies China, asserts sovereignty over contested reef

CHINA IS demanding the Philippines remove a scuttled naval vessel being used as an occupied base from the disputed Ayungin Shoal or Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea, but President Ferdinand Marcos stood firm that the country will continue to assert its sovereignty over the territory.

Marcos also held a command conference with senior defense and military officials in a bid to come up with a comprehensive action to respond to China’s dangerous maneuvers and illegal use of water cannons against the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) vessels in Ayungin Shoal.

The demand came after a Chinese Coast Guard vessel fired a powerful water cannon at a Philippine Coast Guard vessel escorting a civilian boat carrying supplies to troops stationed at the dilapidated tank landing ship BRP Sierra Madre in Ayungin Shoal recently.

The U.S., Japan, Australia, Germany and Canada condemned China’s aggression.

BRP Sierra Madre

The Sierra Madre had been run aground intentionally on May 9, 1997 to serve as an outpost to boost the Philippines’ claim to sovereignty over the Spratly islands.

China claims ownership over virtually the entire strategic waterway despite international rulings that have invalidated Beijing’s vast territorial claims, such as that of 2016 by the Permanent Court of Arbitration, an international body based in The Hague.

Tensions between China and the Philippines over the South China Sea have risen since Marcos took office last year and moved Manila back towards its longtime ally the United States, reversing the direction taken by his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte.

 “We continue to assert our sovereignty. We continue to assert our territorial rights in the face of all of these challenges and consistent with the international law and UNCLOS especially,” Marcos said, referring to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. “So, that has always been our stand. But we still have to keep communicating with the Chinese government, with President Xi, with Beijing. We still have to keep communicating with them because we need to really come to a conclusion.”

In 2016, the Philippines won its arbitration case against China.

The Chinese attack on the Philippine vessels came weeks after Duterte went to China on his own to speak to Xi, but details of the meeting were not made public either by the former president or Beijing.

Last April, Chinese ambassador to Manila, Huang Xilian, accused the Philippines of “stoking the fire” of regional tensions by offering expanded military base access to the U.S., saying that the goal was to interfere in China’s affairs with Taiwan.

China’s ruling Communist Party has never controlled Taiwan but claims the self-ruled island democracy as its own and has repeatedly refused to rule out taking it by force, a threat which Manila perceives as reason to ramp up its guard with help from Washington.

Huang also appeared to threaten overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Taiwan, which prompted a backlash in the Philippines. “The Philippines is advised to unequivocally oppose ‘Taiwan independence’ rather than stoking the fire by offering the US access to the military bases near the Taiwan Strait, if you care genuinely about the 150,000 OFWs,” Huang said. (Mindanao Examiner, AFP, CNN, VOA)