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Tag: Ayungin shoal

Is the Philippines ready for China’s retaliation?

Xi Jingping and Benigno Aquino III
No ifs and buts about it: the Philippines and China are no longer friends.

That’s a decision that the Philippines made when it hauled China to the United Nations Arbitral Tribunal over the latter’s all -South -China -Sea-encompassing 9-dash line map. As former ambassador to the United Nations Lauro Baja said, “When we filed a case against China at the U.N. that was the end of diplomacy.”

The submission of the Memorial on the case today at the U.N. Court’s headquarters at The Hague further reinforced the hostility.

As a sovereign country, the Philippines has every right to choose who to be friends with and who to take on. The Aquino government has chosen to battle with China. It’s a move applauded by allies who are uncomfortable with the enormous strength of modern China but are hesitant to antagonize the world’s second largest economy.

BRP Sierra Madre in Ayungin shoal:Test for MDT

BRP Sierra Madre in Ayungin Shoal. Photo from New York Times.
BRP Sierra Madre in Ayungin Shoal. Photo from New York Times.

The rising tension at the Ayungin shoal, just 21 nautical miles from Mischief Reef where China has built fortifications, could be a test on the usefulness of the 1951 PH-US Mutual Defense Treaty

In its statement issued last Friday, the Department of Foreign Affairs said: “The BRP Sierra Madre, a commissioned Philippine Naval Vessel, was placed in Ayungin Shoal in 1999 to serve as a permanent Philippine installation in response to China’s illegal occupation of Mischief Reef in 1995. This was prior to the signing of the Declaration of Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea in 2002. The Philippines reiterates that Ayungin Shoal is part of its continental shelf over which the Philippines has sovereign rights and jurisdiction.”

This is the first time that the Philippine government admitted that the 100 meter-long Sierra Madre, a World War II vintage LST that had served the United States as USS Harnett County during the Vietnam War and acquired by the Philippines in 1976, was deliberately grounded in Ayungin Shoal, 105.77 nautical miles from Palawan. Before, Philippine authorities played coy about the grounding of Sierra Madre in Ayungin shoal, which the Chinese call Ren’ai Reef.

‘Stupid proposal, stupid reply’

US Secretary of State Joh Kerry shook hands with his counterparts at this weeks's ARF in Brunei except Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario, whom he embraced.
US Secretary of State Joh Kerry shook hands with his counterparts at this weeks’s ARF in Brunei except Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario, whom he embraced.
Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario is known not to mince words when it comes to China and its behavior in the disputed areas in the West Philippines Sea.

He accused China of “duplicity” and “intimidation” at the 2012 Asean Ministerial Meeting in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. This week, at the 2013 Asean Ministerial Meeting in Brunei, he blasted the neighboring behemoth again saying the “massive presence of Chinese military and paramilitary ships” is destabilizing the region.

Philippine diplomats accompanying him related proudly to reporters how the foreign secretary refuted the accusations of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi that the Philippines is stirring tension in the South China Sea during last Sunday’s Asean plus three (China, Japan, South Korea) meeting.

China offers to remove BRP Sierra Madre from Ayungin shoal

BRP Sierra Madre stuck in Ayungin shoal
BRP Sierra Madre stuck in Ayungin shoal
Chinese Foreign Secretary Wang Yi made an offer yesterday during the Asean Regional Forum in Brunei that rendered the articulate Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario speechless.

Del Rosario told reporters that Wang said “Scarborough and Ayungin were theirs, historically, and we were the ones sending ships, interdicting their fishermen, and the grounded ship has been there for so long.”

Wang was referring to BRP Sierra Madre which ran aground at Ayungin Shoal also known as Second Thomas shoal (Ren’ai Reef to the Chinese) in May 1999.

Ayungin Reef is 105.77 nautical miles from Palawan. It is about 21 nautical miles from Mischief Reef, which was occupied by China in 1995.

Justice Carpio: appeal to world opinion vs Chinese defiance of the rule of law

BRP Sierra Madre stuck in Ayungin Shoal, 25 miles from Mischief Reef occupied by the Chinese.
BRP Sierra Madre stuck in Ayungin Shoal, 25 miles from Mischief Reef occupied by the Chinese.
Here we go again. This time it’s over Ayungin Reef (Ren’ai Reef to the Chinese.)

The Philippine Navy reported sightings of Chinese ships in the vicinity of Ayungin shoal as early as first week of May, the last stretch of the May 13 elections, and before the May 9 incident in Balintang Channel where the Philippine Coast Guard fired upon a Taiwanese fishing vessel and killed one of the fishermen.

The Department of Foreign Affairs filed a diplomatic protest on Chinese presence near Ayungin shoal May 10.

DFA Spokesman Raul Hernandez said in their protest, they cited “the provocative and illegal presence of the Chinese government ships around Ayungin Shoal.”