Former Foreign Secretary Albert Del Rosario on Wednesday asked if allowing Chinese fishermen to fish within the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone can be viewed as a successful Chinese invasion without firing a shot.
Del Rosario posed eight questions over President Rodrigo Duterte’s recent remarks that Chinese fishermen can fish in the country’s EEZ, where an international arbitration panel upheld in a landmark 2016 ruling the Philippines’ exclusive rights to exploit resources.
In a statement, Del Rosario asked the following:
1) Is this to be viewed as a successful Chinese invasion without a shot being fired?
2) Is this now a PH policy?
3) Is this not a clear violation of our Constitution that mandates our President and our military to defend what is ours?
4) To what extent will this adversely diminish or nullify what we had won in our arbitral tribunal victory?
5) To what extent will this embolden the Chinese militia vessels to further bully our fishermen? And what is to happen to our poor fishermen?
6) How close are we now towards also giving up our exclusive rights to oil and gas within our EEZ?
7) With the artificial island building, the destruction of the marine environment and now this, how much faster will it take to exhaust the fish resources?
8) And when will we stop giving our northern neighbor primacy over that of our own people?
Duterte on Monday said the government cannot prohibit Chinese fishermen from fishing within the Philippines’ EEZ as the country benefits from its friendship with China.
Supreme Court Associate Justice Jose Antonio Carpio, one of the country’s leading maritime legal experts and a member of the Philippine legal team to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands where the Philippines won a case that invalidated China’s sprawling South China Sea claim, warned that such move is unconstitutional.
Citing the Constitution, Carpio said: “The State shall protect the nation’s marine wealth in its exclusive economic zone, and reserve its use and enjoyment exclusively to Filipino citizens.”
