Gordon commends Locsin for filing diplomatic protest vs. China's new coast guard law

Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. did the right thing in filing a diplomatic protest against China for its new law which allows its coast guard to shoot foreign vessels in the disputed South China Sea, a senator said Thursday.

“I commend Secretary Locsin for taking a very important and valiant action by standing up for our rights. He did right by our country, and we support him wholeheartedly,” Gordon, chairperson of the Senate justice and human rights committee, said in a statement.

Locsin on Wednesday announced that he filed a diplomatic protest against China, calling its new coast guard law a "verbal threat of war" to other countries.

China's legislative body passed this measure last week which allows its coast guard to use "all necessary means" to stop or prevent threats from foreign vessels.

Specified among its provisions are the circumstances under which different kind of weapons—hand-held, shipborne or airborne—can be used.

Other lawmakers like Senator Risa Hontiveros and Francis Tolentino have also expressed concern for the safety of the Filipino fishermen who venture in the West Philippine Sea, which is also part of the disputed waters being claimed by China.

Manila recently called on Beijing to comply with the July 2016 ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which invalidated China's massive claim over the resource-rich South China Sea, but the latter called the four-year-old decision "illegal and invalid.”—AOL, GMA News