From GMA News (Jun 12):
Govt video rallies support for PHL’s claims in West Philippine Sea
A Philippine government documentary on the South China Sea dispute aired on Friday and gave Filipinos a glimpse of how China’s massive claim threatens the nation’s sovereignty as Beijing makes a creeping invasion in Philippine waters crucial to country's security and economy.
Aired by state-run PTV 4, the documentary appears designed to foster nationalism among Filipinos and drive home the urgency of the importance of defending its off-shore territories in the waters wholly claimed by China.
Kalayaan or Freedom is a three-part series that tackles the economic, historical and legal aspects of the country’s claims over a part of the resource-rich waters it calls West Philippine Sea, but being claimed by China as its own.
Foreign Affairs spokesman Charles Jose, meanwhile, allayed concerns that the documentary would further antagonize China.
“Our objective is to inform our people,” Jose said, adding it is meant to “raise awareness” on the South China Sea issue and to “rally support of our people behind our Philippine government’s policy and action.”
The launch of the first episode, entitled Karapatan sa Karagatan or Maritime Right coincided with the country’s observance of its 117th Independence Day. The second and third episodes will be aired in late June and early July, respectively.
It was narrated in Filipino by local TV personality and host Lourd de Veyra, who accompanied a group of Philippine Navy personnel to the Manila-claimed Scarborough Shoal aboard an islander plane and held separate interviews with Filipino fishermen who were driven away and banned from fishing in the area by China after the shoal came under its control in 2012.
Although the documentary tackled a serious national concern, the producers laced the video with humor as it explained the issue to the masses.
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Scarborough Shoal
From the plane, the video showed three Chinese Coast Guard vessels guarding the shoal – a U-shaped rock formation with a sprawling lagoon teeming with rich maritime resources.
Scarborough, located 124 nautical miles from Masinloc town in Zambales and 472 nautical miles from China’s nearest coastal province of Hainan, is called Huangyan Island by the Chinese.
Manila and Beijing figured in a dangerous standoff in the area in 2012, but China seized Scarborough when Philippine government ships withdrew due to bad weather.
Philippine fishing vessels were restricted from going inside the shoal as larger and more advanced Chinese fishing boats, escorted by China’s Coast Guard, were the only ones allowed to fish inside the lagoon teeming with lush marine life and species, such as giant clams and giant turtles.
Filipino fishermen recounted in the video that they were harassed on several occasions by armed Chinese Coast Guard vessels during their fishing expeditions at the shoal.
“Before we could get near, they surrounded us and pointed guns at us and asked us to leave the shoal. We were so scared so we had no choice but to leave,” one fisherman said in the documentary.
Another fisherman said in one incident, their small fishing boat was rammed by a bigger Chinese government ship.
Scarborough is a traditional fishing ground for Filipinos and has provided livelihoods to many coastal towns in Zambales and Pangasinan.
“We are an archipelagic state. We are surrounded by sea. Our resource is fish so we are called a quintessential coastal state. What does it mean? Many towns are less than 100 kilometers away from our coast and many people are dependent on marine resources,” Bensurto said.
Chinese fishermen’s activities likewise left deep scuffmarks on the reefs in Scarborough, an aerial footage showed.
“It will not return to its original form for a very long time and that’s what we fear,” said Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Chief Asis Perez.
“Coral Reefs has a major contribution to the marine ecosystem as the fish breed there and they live there,” he said.
Law of the Sea
Philippine officials maintained the shoal is within the country’s exclusive economic zone as allowed by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea or UNCLOS – an agreement signed by 163 nations, including China and the Philippines.
But China insists it owns the South China Sea - a major global shipping lane - nearly in its entirety, citing historical entitlements as the basis for its huge claim, which Manila calls “excessive and illegal.”
China’s claim is enclosed in a tongue-shaped map, represented by nine dashes it calls ‘nine-dash line.”
“Why nine-dash line? Because there are no coordinates, you have to guess. It’s like drawing a map and saying this is mine,” said Philippine Consul General to San Francis Henry Bensurto, who concurrently heads the Philippine legal team on the West Philippine Sea claim.
“The problem with the 9-dash line is that it’s so far from China’s nearest landmass of Hainan and extends more than 800 nautical miles, which is in contravention of the allowed 200-nautical mile claim mandated by the UNCLOS,” Bensurto said. “It encroaches on our legitimate rights under the UNCLOS.”
China’s nine-dash line claim, Bensurto said, covers 80 percent of the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone, including parts of Malaysia and Vietnam, he said.
BBC journalist Bill Hayton, author of the ‘The South China Sea: The struggle for power in Asia,’ said China’s historical and huge claim has no legal basis.
“You claim resources of the sea based on the land. You don’t just say all of the sea belongs to us without measuring the distance,” he said.
Despite criticisms, China remains adamant, saying its claim is “indisputable” and to bolster its assertion, it recently constructed man-made islands in seven disputed features in the waters, prompting serious concerns from the United States, Japan, and other G-7 nations.
“Those historic rights are collective hallucinations,” Hayton said.
Bensurto said China’s nine-dash line claim began to take shape in the 1970s when it forcibly took a part of the South China Sea, called the Paracels, from the Vietnamese in 1974, yielding 53 deaths from Vietnam and 18 from China.
Another battle between the two neighbors ensued in the 1980s in the Fiery Cross Reef further down south in the Spratlys.
Mischief Reef
In both incidents, Bensurto admitted the Philippines as well as other nations did not intervene as they saw no imminent threat from the incident.
A decade later, China seized another feature in the Spratlys: Manila's Mischief Reef – a feature within the Philippines EEZ and located 124 nautical miles from Palawan.
Then in 2012, Manila lost Scarborough Shoal to the Chinese.
From Mischief Reef, China, Bensurto warned, is looking towards establishing a presence in gas-rich Reed Bank, just 84 nautical miles from Palawan.
Bensurto said China is capturing all strategic features in the South China Sea so that it can fully implement its nine-dash line clam.
“China is also imposing a fishing ban. They are doing this to enforce the nine-dash line,” he said.
With a weak military, the Philippines has no other option but to use diplomacy in handling its rifts with China. In 2013, Manila took a bold gamble and filed an arbitration case against Beijing, a move that Philippine officials say is an open, friendly, durable and rules-based dispute-settlement mechanism.
China refused to participate in the proceedings, saying Manila’s case is baseless and lacks legal merit.
The documentary warned of serious economic implications if China seizes control of all features in the West Philippine Sea, where natural gas deposits have been discovered.
“Energy,” Bensurto said, “is important for the progress of our nation.”
“We need energy to have electricity to run industries. We should protect our seas and preserve our maritime resources,” he said.
In closing, host De Veyra rallied Filipinos to defend what belongs to the Philippines.
“This our fight,” De Veyra said. “If we don’t get involved and act maybe there won’t be anything that we can bequeath to the next generation."
“The problem is you have a neighbor who sneaks in and out of your waters and takes away all the resources,” he said. “This is ours.”
http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/503230/news/nation/govt-video-rallies-support-for-phl-s-claims-in-west-philippine-sea
