President Rodrigo Duterte has accepted China’s offer to conduct a joint investigation on the June 9 collision of Chinese and Filipino fishing vessels in Recto Bank, Malacanang said on Saturday.
This despite Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro L. Locsin Jr.’s pronouncement that there will be no joint investigation on the incident, which left 22 Filipino fishermen floating at sea but was rescued later by Vietnamese fishermen.
But the Palace said conducting separate investigations “may raise speculation and accusation of bias” while a joint and impartial investigation will promote the “expedient resolution of the issue” and will be in accordance with international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
“The duty of seafarers to rescue those at peril in the sea is a well entrenched principle of international law, maritime law, and humanitarian law as well. The basic dictates of justice demand a full account of the events that ultimately led to the abandonment of our twenty two ( 22 ) distressed firshermen in the middle of the sea and accountability of those at fault,” said Presidential Spokesman and Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador S. Panelo in a statement. “With this in mind, the Palace wishes to inform our people that President Rodrigo Roa Duterte welcomes and accepts the offer of the Chinese Government to conduct a joint investigation to determine what really transpired in Recto Bank and find a satisfactory closure to this episode.”
Moreover, the President wants the creation of a joint investigating committee composed of three groups of highly qualified and competent individuals, with both nations having one representative each, and a third member coming from a “neutral” country.
“To be clear, we are by no means relinquishing any inch of our sovereign rights, nor compromising the rights of our twenty two (22) fishermen. We are demanding justice for our countrymen, and we are using all legal means toward that end,” Panelo added.
The Philippines has since filed a diplomatic protest against China over the Recto Bank incident.
In a briefing on Thursday, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Lu Kang, proposed the joint probe wherein two countries “can exchange respective findings and properly handle the matter through friendly consultations” by jointly investigating the incident.
On Friday, President Duterte also said in a speech that he will bring up the territorial dispute in the South China Sea “lengthily” during the 34th Asean Summit in Bangkok, Thailand.
Duterte said he would be posing the question, whether or not it is correct for China to declare ownership of an ocean.
This even though he already pointed out that that the Recto Bank incident is “not a confrontation of armed men or machines or ships.”
He also said he is not afraid of China but that Filipinos may die helplessly if both nations will go to war over the territorial dispute.
Although the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration issued a landmark decision in 2016 invalidating China’s “excessive” claims to the West Philippine Sea, China has opted not to recognize the arbitral ruling.
Image credits: Robinson Ninal Jr./ Malacanang Presidential Photographers Division via AP