MALACAÑANG yesterday said no one can “diminish” the value of the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration that invalidated China’s sweeping claims in the South China Sea, including areas within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.
The arbitral court’s resolution favoring the Philippines was issued on July 12, 2016 and on the fifth anniversary on Monday, Chinese Foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told a briefing the ruling is “illegal, null, and void” and “nothing more than a piece of waste paper.”
China has been refusing to recognize the arbitral court’s ruling. It is claiming islands and islets in the South China Sea while the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Vietnam are claiming only parts. China has been aggressive in its claim in the past few years, doing reclamation and construction work in a number of the disputed areas.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said China’s rejection of the Philippines’ landmark victory is expected.
“The President and the UN (United Nations) said, it forms part of international law and no one can diminish that,” he said.
Roque said President Duterte, while quoted in May as saying that the arbitration ruling is just a piece of paper that can be thrown in the waste bin, had asserted the ruling during a UN General Assembly last year and firmly rejected any attempts to undermine it.
Duterte, in his speech before the virtual 75th United Nations General Assembly in September 2020, said the “award is now part of international law, beyond compromise and beyond the reach of passing governments to dilute, diminish, or abandon.”
“We firmly reject attempts to undermine it,” he said, adding that the ruling “stands for the triumph of reason over rashness, of law over disorder, of amity over ambition.”
Roque, meanwhile, dismissed the call of Vice President Leni Robredo for the administration to be brave against China as she expressed dismay over how the government is handling the situation.
He said Duterte’s raising the issue and asserting the position of the Philippines during the UN Assembly is brave enough for him.
“Hindi ko po alam kung anong tapang ang gusto niyang ipakita pero nagsalita na po ang Presidente malinaw, matapang sa UN General Assembly. The arbitral ruling is already part of international law. Kung hindi po iyan matapang, hindi ko po alam kung ano ang matapang (I don’t know what kind of bravery she wants the government to show but the President has spoken clearly and bravely at the UN General Assembly. If that’s not brave, I don’t know what is),” he said.
A US-based group yesterday stood pat on its report, earlier disputed by Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, that Chinese ships have been dumping human waste and sewage in the West Philippine Sea in the South China Sea.
“The imagery and algorithm we used to identify chlorophyll-a from satellite imagery in our latest report is well researched and validated,” Simularity said in its website.
Lizz Derr, founder and chief executive officer of Simularity which specializes in geospatial analysis and production of satellite data imagery, presented the group’s report during an online briefing last Monday.
Derr reported that Chinese ships have have dumping raw sewage every day for the past several years, producing the harmful chlorophyll-a blooms in the contested area.
Lorenzana has said the report dumping of waste “is not true” and there has been no report report from the AFP Western Command about any waste dumping.
Nevertheless, Lorenzana said he has directed the Western Command to “verify and validate” the waste dumping. If true, If true, he said this is “gravely detrimental to the marine ecology in the area.”
Lorenzana also questioned the conclusion of Simularity “from just looking at satellite photos.”
While standing by its report yesterday, Simularity said: “We welcome investigation into the methods and results of our research, as it is all reproducible, based on publicly available sources, and the approach and interpretation are validated by readily available scientific papers, many of which we credit as sources in our report.” — With Victor Reyes
