Palace: China’s harvesting of Scarborough clams an affront to PHL sovereignty

Malacañang on Tuesday took exception to China’s extraction of giant clams at  Scarborough Shoal, calling it an “affront” to the country’s sovereignty.

A report by ABS-CBN News on Monday said local fishermen have been watching the Chinese harvesting giant clams for years and that members of the China Coast Guard have been preventing Filipino fishing vessels from accessing the shoal, a traditional fishing ground off the coast of Zambales.

“It is an affront to our territory and to our sovereignty,” presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said at a news conference when asked if the reported mass harvesting was a violation of the country’s sovereign rights.

Scarborough, called Huangyan Island by the Chinese, is within the Philippines’ 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone.

Panelo said that the Philippine government has filed a diplomatic protest and will be taking legal action against China over the incident as announced by Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr.

"We just caught them doing that recently, filed a diplomatic note, and will be taking legal action. With our legal department now," Locsin tweeted on Tuesday.

China and five other governments—Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan—have been locked in long-simmering territorial rifts in the South China Sea that analysts feared as Asia’s next potential flashpoint for a major armed conflict.

Beijing insists ownership over the waters and its features nearly in its entirety—a claim debunked by an arbitral tribunal court in The Hague, Netherlands in July 2016, shortly after President Rodrigo Duterte assumed office.

“As far as it is concerned, it owns the vast South China Sea. Hence, logically, it will be performing acts of ownership or sovereignty over those areas. In other words, they are just being consistent with themselves,” Panelo said.

“Eh tayo rin, we have to be consistent with ours. As far as we are concerned, that is ours so we will be objecting to any intrusion into our own territory,” he added.

The Palace urged China to respect the arbitral decision even as Beijing refused to recognize it. — BM, GMA News