Foreign Affairs Teodoro Locsin Jr. on Wednesday said he was “curious” about how China has responded to the protest filed by the Philippines over the swarming of more than 200 Chinese vessels near the Julian Felipe Reef in the West Philippine Sea.
“Just because you name something doesn't mean it becomes yours when it already had a name of its own conferred by its legal owner,” Locsin said in an early morning tweet.
The foreign affairs chief even sarcastically likened China’s behavior to the biblical story of Adam and Eve, the stewards of everything that God had made.
“I blame the Bible with Adam and Eve walking around Eden pointing at and giving things names,” Locsin said.
On March 22, 2021, or a day after the Philippines filed a diplomatic protest, the Chinese Embassy in Manila insisted that the Julian Felipe Reef or Niu’e Jiao (Chinese name) was a “part of China’s Nansha Qundao.
It maintained that Chinese fishing vessels have been fishing in its adjacent waters for many years.
The Department of Foreign Affairs, however, said Julian Felipe Reef in the Kalayaan Group of Island lies in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and the continued deployment, lingering, and presence of Chinese vessels in the area “infringe upon Philippine sovereignty, sovereign rights, and jurisdiction.”
In a statement on Tuesday, the DFA called on China to faithfully honor its obligations as a State Party to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and to respect and abide by the final and binding July 12 ruling of the Arbitral Tribunal in the Hague that invalidated Beijing’s excessive nine-dash line claim.