Next stop, Panganiban Reef

(The Philippine Star), November 1, 2016

So far, so good… fishing communities in Zambales are said to be looking forward to a bountiful Christmas. This was after Chinese Coast Guard vessels stopped preventing Filipinos from fishing in Panatag or Scarborough Shoal.

Some reports said the Chinese had “allowed” the Filipinos to return to the shoal, which lies just 123 nautical miles from Zambales, after a blockade that started in 2012. In fact no country can “allow” another to fish in the shoal. Last July, the UN-backed Permanent Arbitration Court in The Hague ruled that the shoal is a common fishing ground and China had violated the Philippines’ fishing rights in preventing Filipinos from entering Panatag.

The court, which invalidated China’s nine-dash-line claim over nearly all of the South China Sea, also specifically granted the Philippines sovereign rights over Panganiban or Mischief Reef, Ayungin or Second Thomas Shoal and Recto or Reed Bank.

President Duterte, before leaving for China last week, announced that he would seek an end to the Chinese occupation of Panatag. Over the weekend Zambales fisherfolk reported that they could fish again in the shoal that they also call Bajo de Masinloc. Yesterday Beijing confirmed that its Coast Guard had stopped preventing Filipinos from entering the shoal.

This is a welcome development in warming relations between the two countries. The next stop in the rapprochement will have to be Panganiban Reef, located about 135 nautical miles from Palawan, where the Chinese began constructing huts ostensibly as shelters for fishermen in 1994. Today a multistory concrete structure flying the Chinese flag sits on the reef. For China, giving up the reef will be more complicated than giving way to Filipino fisherfolk in Panatag.

It’s unclear if President Duterte also mentioned Panganiban Reef in his meetings with Chinese officials in Beijing. The reef is well within the Philippines’ 200-mile exclusive economic zone as defined under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, on which the arbitral court ruling was based.

President Duterte has said the ruling is non-negotiable even as he strengthens Philippine ties with Beijing. His resolve will be tested in Panganiban. One of his Cabinet members had remarked that Chinese aid comes with no conditionalities or strings attached. At this point in fact it does, and the conditionality is worse than adherence to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: giving up the Philippines’ sovereign rights in contested waters. But with President Duterte’s friendly overtures toward Beijing, perhaps even Panganiban may soon revert to Philippine control.