Marcos’ US-inspired Ayungin actions fail: It’s back to Erap pact
WHILE referring to life in general, Shakespeare’s famous quote applies so well to President
Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s administration’s two-year chapter in trying to prove that we control
Ayungin Shoal and that we can supply the BRP Sierra Madre, deliberately grounded since
1999, not only with food that the Marines stationed there need but also repair materials for
the dilapidated vessel. Marcos Ayungin chapter has been “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound
and fury, signifying nothing.”
The Philippines and China are back to former president Joseph Estrada’s agreement made
25 years ago with the Chinese, designed for both sides not to lose face. The Chinese won’t
forcibly remove the Sierra Madre that Estrada’s defense secretary had ordered the Navy to
ground there in 1999 as a symbol of our sovereignty, which Estrada didn’t authorize.
It was actually a silly idea. A Navy admiral, who knew nothing of international law, claimed
that it would still be in the Navy’s list of vessels (each of which is technically Philippine soil).
However, maritime law would classify it as a shipwreck, requiring the owner to remove it.
Under the pact that Estrada agreed with the Chinese, the Philippines will “in time” tow it away just as it did with the Sierra Madre’s sister BRP Benguet, similarly grounded at the same time for the same reason near Scarborough Shoal. We will supply food and other necessities in life to the platoon of Marines stationed there to guard it against scavengers. However, the Chinese forbade the Philippine government from undertaking the repair of the ship or repairing it with materials supplied to it.
Anybody who claims there wasn’t such an agreement should simply look at the many pictures of the vessel. It was spic-and-span when it was grounded there 25 years ago. Now, it is so full of rust inside and out that it would have sunk several years ago if not for the fact that its bottom is stuck in corrals: we complied with the agreement not to undertake maintenance of the vessel.
Diplomats
Chinese diplomats regularly reminded the Philippines of its promise to remove the Sierra Madre, with our diplomats nodding their heads and their government not doing anything to do it. On the sidelines of the Asean Regional Forum in 2013, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi had even asked Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario when will the Philippines remove the ship. As del Rosario himself related to media, he told Wang that the government doesn’t have the funds to do so yet. The Chinese diplomat, without hesitation, responded: “The PLA Navy can do it for you.” Del Rosario couldn’t utter an answer.
Last week, the Chinese foreign ministry’s spokesman said in his regular press conference that a resupply mission to the Sierra Madre was conducted by the Philippine Coast Guard after its coast guard “confirmed onsite that the Philippine vessel carried only humanitarian living necessities.” That is, it did not supply repair materials. The spokesman explained this peaceful resupply was the result of a new agreement made with the Philippines after much negotiations. But it is really an old agreement, that which Estrada made 25 years ago.
However, DFA spokesman Ma. Teresita Daza tried to downplay the agreement and even claimed there was “no prior notification” nor “onsite inspection,” therefore calling the Chinese spokesman a liar. She did not deny, though, the Chinese claims that our Coast Guard was allowed to supply only living necessities.
The DFA, though, should just release the text of the agreement. Why isn’t it doing so?
Because it would reveal that after all this Ayungin hullabaloo for two years now, the dozen attempts by the Philippine Coast Guard to defy the Chinese to the extent of being shooed away with water cannons, the loss of a sailor’s thumb, probably the millions of pesos used to fund that “Atin Ito” group pretending to be fishermen, the hogging of newspaper banner stories by images of Chinese “bullying,” it’s just back to the Estrada agreement.
Madness
But there was a reason for this madness: that of the US. Since the Obama administration’s “Pivot to Asia” policy started in 2009, a thinly disguised program to prevent China’s rise as a hegemon in Asia, among other things, by demonizing it as an imperialist power in the region, the US was able to use then-president Benigno Aquino 3rd and now President Marcos Jr. as its puppets to undertake actions to provoke the superpower to retaliate.
This would portray China as a bully, which would require the US to rush to the Philippines’ succor. Among these actions was Aquino 3rd’s failed attempt in 2012 to arrest Chinese fishermen in Scarborough Shoal, even sending his biggest warship to do so, which only led to our total loss of that area; the arbitration suit filed under the provisions of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos) to rule China’s holdings in the South China Sea as illegal; the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement first entered into by Aquino 3rd that allowed the US to establish five rotational military bases in the country; Marcos’ addition of four more US bases, three of which were certainly provocative as it was obvious these sites are intended to help defend Taiwan from a Chinese attempt to retake its rogue province.
It was the suit against China that was a big blowback to the US’ moves to contain China. In response to that, China mustered huge resources to transform their reefs into artificial islands with fortifications, making these fully equipped military installations with airstrips, ports, communication facilities and huge barracks for soldiers.
The most successful US move, though has been to get the Philippine Coast Guard to undertake nearly suicidal missions to ignore the Estrada agreement and provide the Sierra Madre with repair supplies.
Strategists
American strategists obviously knew that the Chinese would very easily detect that the Filipino vessels were hiding repair supplies to the Sierra Madre. The Chinese, therefore, repelled these vessels through their bigger vessels’ maneuvering and with their water cannons, which, however, fell short of being labeled as military attacks against Philippine vessels that could have invoked the Mutual Defense Treaty with the US.
I suspect the US recently asked Marcos to stop such provocative actions against the Chinese as a war, or even just a minor military skirmish with it, could affect the Democrats’ chances of retaining the presidency in November.
The US had proven how mighty its media apparatus can be when it spread the lie in 2003 that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and therefore had to be invaded and, as State Secretary James Baker 3rd said, be “bombed back to the Stone Age.” It is proving just as powerful in the case of the propaganda against China.
I was indeed shocked that the editorial of this esteemed newspaper, bylined “By the Editorial Board,” repeated the fallacy that has been the ubiquitous US propaganda line:
“Ayungin Shoal is 106.3 nautical miles from the island province of Palawan, 423.3 nautical miles from the Paracels and 617.39 nautical miles from the Chinese mainland — clearly beyond the 200-nautical-mile maximum maritime entitlement for an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) under the United National Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos). In accordance with the Unclos and the final and binding 2016 award in the South China Sea arbitration, Ayungin is within the Philippines’ EEZ and continental shelf, over which the country has sovereign rights and jurisdiction. China cannot, therefore, lawfully exercise sovereignty over it.”
Shockingly
This is so totally, blatantly, shockingly wrong that I’d bet my job as a columnist here if that statement is proven right.
The Chinese do not claim Ayungin Shoal as theirs because it is within its EEZ. China, as well as Vietnam, claims that what we call the Kalayaan Island Group, where Ayungin Shoal is, is part of their sovereign territory, which claims were made centuries ago and officially declared as such in the post-war period, even decades before the treaty called Unclos defined the EEZ. The EEZ is not even a territorial claim but only means certain rights, short of sovereignty, to a 200-nautical mile maritime area beyond a state’s roughly outermost land boundaries.
The thinking that Ayungin and the Spratlys, as that editorial puts it, is “clearly beyond the 200-nautical-mile maximum maritime entitlement for an EEZ” is due to a blatant ignorance of nations’ unique territory called “outlying archipelagos.” These are territories far from the sovereign’s mainland — which could even be on the other side of the globe — but are its undisputed territories, mostly established by colonial powers during their heyday and by medieval empires such as Vietnam and China.
Among such outlying archipelagos are the US Hawaiian Islands (3,500 kilometers from the US mainland and annexed in 1898, with its over 1 million indigenous population now reduced to 40,000); the Falkland Islands, 13,000 km away from its sovereign United Kingdom; and New Caledonia, 17,000 km from France. The Spratlys are 1,327 km from the Chinese mainland, which they call Nansha Qundao and 900 km from Vietnam, which that country calls Quần đảo Trường Sa.
Contrary to that editorial, the arbitration suit did not and cannot rule on sovereignty claims — which nobody can decide on — but only whether a nation’s claimed maritime area (such as the EEZ) conforms with the provisions of the Unclos, which, as its name points out is a “Law (really a treaty) of the Sea.” But China’s claim is not about maritime areas but on sovereign territory.
The arbitration ruling even ruled that it could not decide on the Philippine suit involving Ayungin, as what was complained about were the alleged moves of the Chinese to block its resupply attempts. The arbitration ruling said this was “quintessentially military in nature,” which is totally beyond its jurisdiction.
I’m sure this paper’s Editorial Board since the name suggests this paper’s governing body, would agree to provide space to engage me in a debate on whether what it wrote is garbage. Our readers expect nothing less for such an important issue, that will lead us to economic perdition.
Be brave to fight for the truth.
The post Marcos’ US-inspired Ayungin actions fail: It’s back to Erap pact first appeared on Rigoberto Tiglao.
Marcos’ US-inspired Ayungin actions fail: It’s back to Erap pact
Source: Breaking News PH
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