Debunking the 3 Senate stooges’ claims

Last of two parts

WHEN Senators Vicente Sotto III, Panfilo Lacson and JV Ejercito call their colleagues who didn’t sign the resolution against the Chinese Embassy “pro-China” and those, like me, who are critical of this administration’s belligerent stance toward China “pro-Chinese trolls,” I have all the right to call them names, too. I call them stooges of US imperialism, since they are basically echoing wittingly or unwittingly the US propaganda line of demonizing China, the existential threat now to its unipolar hegemony.

I’m sure the senators have heard of the saying, “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” In this case, it means that the senators cannot claim a monopoly of name-calling.

I am simply giving them a dose of their own medicine. As a sarcastic Filipino sentence puts it: “Sila lang ba ang pwedeng magmura?”

However, I will move the debate to a higher ground by explaining why these senators are really so ignorant of our disputes with China.

Let’s discuss a particular US-inspired propaganda line which Lacson articulated: “Our countrymen were being water-cannoned, one lost a finger, and our ships were being harassed. Why did they not show sympathy?”

The truth though is that our defense establishment, especially the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), have adopted — upon the advice of American advisers — a strategy of provoking the Chinese to violent action against their vessels to portray to Filipinos and the world community that China is undertaking aggression to claim areas that belong to the Philippines. Being tapped here is the old archetypical legend, much misused by propagandists, of David vs Goliath.

Note that such confrontations between Chinese and Filipino vessels have occurred only during this administration, which has become so servile to the US agenda to make the Philippines its base of its operations in case of a war with China. The US defense establishment is forecasting that such war will break out when China moves to invade Taiwan, which their think tanks think would happen in the period from 2027 to 2030.

Build-up

This estimate is based on the American intelligence assessment that China’s hectic buildup of its military might, especially of its Navy, in the past decade would be completed in this period. They also think that after China’s virtual transformation into a First World power and the campaign against corruption, its leader Xi Jinping thinks the “return” of its rogue province Taiwan will be his legacy, and put him on par with Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping as a revered Chinese leader.

The gist of our disputes with China is that they claim that the entire Spratlys (where the islands and reefs we occupy, including the largest Pag-asa, are) is their sovereign territory as its “outlying archipelago,” in the way United States claims Hawaii, Wake and Midway Atoll as being theirs.

The Chinese claims were formalized in the modern age in a 1947 official map (which the Philippines and other countries did not protest) and other state actions such as the 1992 Law on the Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone that categorically claimed that the Spratlys and three other archipelagos in the South China Sea were part of Chinese territory.

The Philippines, on the other hand, claimed the Spratlys because the dictator Marcos declared so, through his Presidential Decree 1596 of 1978, to formalize the seizure from 1970 to 1978 by his Marines of seven islands, which after the Taiwanese-controlled Itu Aba, were the only features above water. Why? The strongman was convinced by his cronies and US oil exploration firms that there were vast deposits of oil in the area.

China and Vietnam protested but were helpless. China was still recovering from its disastrous 10-year “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” really a civil war, while Vietnam had just ended its own civil war in 1975 that had its communists victorious over the US-backed South Vietnam. All Vietnam could was to occupy 10 features that Marcos’ military shirked from occupying since these were mostly reefs or islets barely above water. China would have a sufficient Navy to occupy only six reefs in 1988.

To help the stooges who might have lost their capacity to read books to understand the issue, I include here the latest available map of the Philippines, which the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority gave me in 2021, after I invoked the Freedom of Information executive order issued by Duterte. The map shows that what the Philippines considered as its territory has been the polygon the Americans drew when it bought the colony from Spain in the 1898 Treaty of Paris, with the only change being the hexagon representing Marcos creation of the Kalayaan Island Group. The Philippines has not issued a new official map showing its new, territorial seas nor its EEZ, as defined by UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos), the 2009 baselines law.

Other than this Marcos decree — which is unclear whether the Philippines had dropped it or not, since the arbitral tribunal also ruled that the Marcos-created Kalayaan Island Group violates the Unclos, just as China’s nine-dash line does — the Philippines’ claims in the South China Sea disputes are mostly based on the so-called exclusive economic zone (EEZ) that extends 200 nautical miles seaward from our land territory.

Established by Unclos, which took effect in 1994, the EEZ is an inferior claim for a territorial claim, as it doesn’t give us sovereign rights over a maritime area but mainly only a first-claim (“exclusive”) on the exploitation of its natural resources.

When the original stooge PCG officer Jay Tarriela screams that China “is violating our sovereignty,” what he means is that our vessels were stopped by water cannons or by maneuver by the China Coast Guard ships when these enter an area which is presumably our EEZ, but which the Chinese consider as part of their outlying-archipelago territory they call the Nansha Islands. China’s prestige would of course be trashed if it can’t protect its EEZ or territory from intrusions by vessels of the puny Philippines.

When Lacson mentioned a sailor “losing a finger” in a clash with the Chinese, he was referring to the incident at Ayungin Shoal in 2024, where Estrada’s Defense department grounded in 1999 a Landing Ship Tank (LST), the BRP Sierra Madre thinking that the government could argue that it represents its territorial claim. Another LST was for the same reason grounded near Scarborough Shoal.

Estrada

Apparently, these actions were not authorized by Estrada, who was enraged when he found out about it, after being told that the scheduled official visit of Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji scheduled for November 2000 would be canceled if the grounded vessels were not removed.

Estrada ordered the two vessels removed, but the Navy could remove only the one at Scarborough Shoal since it was nearer the mainland and accessible. The Navy told Estrada that they could not remove the Sierra Madre in Ayungin Shoal in time for Zhu Rongji’s arrival. Estrada appealed to the Chinese to agree that he promises to remove the BRP Sierra Madre. The Chinese agreed but imposed the condition that the Philippines would not attempt to repair nor fortify the BRP Sierra Madre, and that only food, water and other subsistence supplies would be delivered to the Marine contingent stationed there to guard the vessel from scavengers.

Estrada, however, was removed two months later, and the issue was shelved by his successor, Gloria Arroyo. Despite the Chinese efforts to get the Philippines to remove the vessel, the latter did not bother to do it. It complied though with the Chinese condition not to deliver supplies to prevent the ship from deteriorating, resulting in its very dilapidated, rust-filled condition.

The Defense department under the incumbent Ferdinand Marcos Jr., however, started ignoring the no-repair promise to the Chinese, and intermittently tried to deliver repair and anti-rust supplies to the ship. This led to clashes with the Chinese Coast Guard, which mostly used water cannons to push the Philippine vessels away from approaching the grounded LST.

The situation escalated, however, when the Chinese decided in June 2024 to send boarding boats to stop the PCG vessels that were attempting to deliver repair supplies to the Sierra Madre. The Chinese used knives and machetes in their attempt to sink the PCG’s inflatable pontoons heading for the Sierra Madre. In the melee — boats colliding, equipment being seized, blades striking rubber and metal — the collision of the vessels’ rigid frames severed a sailor’s thumb, most probably to the delight of the likes of Tarriela, who saw it as a huge opportunity to rouse Filipinos’ anger against the Chinese.

Of course, Lacson and the other stooges in the Senate don’t bother to go beyond the headlines and claims of pro-US propagandists.

Why do we bother to debunk the US-inspired allegations of China’s expansionism? Because China is now our biggest trading partner, with the US falling behind. China could also be a source of funds for our much-needed infrastructure, as is the case with the Davao-Samal Bridge, 90 percent of whose P24-billion cost is being paid for by the Chinese.

We can’t hurl lies and unfounded allegations against China, just to comply with the US agenda to demonize China.

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Debunking the 3 Senate stooges’ claims
Source: Breaking News PH