February 15 ------ The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has chided a Chinese consul for allegedly “misrepresenting facts” in the 2016 arbitral ruling that invalidated China’s massive claims in the South China Sea. China’s Consul General to Cebu Zhang Zhen has been quoted as saying at a Feb. 8 press conference in Iloilo City, that the ruling of the arbitral tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands was “illegal, null, and void” and that China “has and will never accept it. We note the statement made by the Chinese Consul General last 08 February 2024. We take serious exception to China’s continued misrepresentation of the law and the facts,” a DFA statement said.
The 2016 ruling upheld Philippine sovereign rights in its Exclusive Economic Zone under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea or UNCLOS and declared as illegal China’s expansive territorial claims in the disputed waters. The DFA said China should respect the tribunal’s decision. “The Philippines and China are both parties to UNCLOS. We have and will consistently call on China to act responsibly and abide by its obligations under UNCLOS and the final and binding 2016 Arbitral Award on the South China Sea,” the DFA said.
GMA News Online has sought a comment from the Chinese Embassy and will publish it as soon as it becomes available. A major newspaper in Western Visayas carried the report and said Zhen provided the outlet with a 41-page press briefer outlining China’s legal and historical evidence on the strategic and resource-rich waters “to get to the root of the issue and set the record straight.”
Security experts at a forum on Tuesday warned against China’s alleged “escalating” efforts to engage in propaganda and misinformation on the South China Sea issue by tapping personalities from the media and academe to spread pro-Chinese narrative. Tackling disinformation in the West Philippine Sea organized by the Stratbase Institute, experts called on the Philippine government to maintain its assertive transparency strategy to expose Chinese aggressive actions in the South China Sea. Retired US Colonel Raymond Powell, founder of the security think tank Project Sealight, said institutionalizing transparency is crucial and must be disseminated “so that everybody will fully understand it. Maximum transparency brings maximum accountability,” he said.
Source: gmanetwork.com
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