BRP Sierra Madre
MANILA, Philippines — The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) rejected claim of the Chinese embassy that the Philippines promised to remove the BRP Sierra Madre from Ayungin Shoal, saying Manila “will never abandon” the vessel.
AFP spokesperson for the West Philippine Sea retired Rear Adm. Roy Vincent Trinidad said the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) speaks of “promises and demands” but it “very easily forgets its own track record of deceptive narratives in our waters.”
“The AFP rejects the recent statement from the Chinese embassy in Manila attempting to rewrite history regarding the presence of the BRP Sierra Madre at Ayungin Shoal,” Trinidad said.
Trinidad’s statement was in response to Chinese embassy deputy spokesperson Guo Wei’s accusation that the Philippines promised to tow away the vessel.
The CCP, he said, first illegally occupied Panganiban Reef (Mischief Reef), a feature within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ), in 1995.
He noted that it is “on record” that the Chinese Foreign Ministry assured the Philippines and the international community that the small, octagonal wooden structures built on Panganiban Reef were merely “shelters for local fishermen.”
China had promised that these temporary structures possessed “no military purpose.”
“Today, those ‘shelters’ have been transformed into a fortified, 550-hectare military airbase complete with a 3,000-meter runway, missile emplacements, radar domes and naval berths,” Trinidad said.
“Mischief Reef stands as a permanent, concrete monument to their deceptive strategy in the West Philippine Sea,” he added.
He said that unlike China’s illegal island-building and militarization of low-tide elevations inside the Philippine EEZ, the grounding of BRP Sierra Madre in 1999 was a lawful sovereign act.
“The presence of the BRP Sierra Madre on Ayungin Shoal is a lawful, permanent sovereign deployment on a feature over which we exercise sovereign rights and jurisdiction,” Trinidad said.
He said this was affirmed by the 2016 Arbitral Tribunal which ruled that Ayungin Shoal is a low-tide elevation within the Philippines’ EEZ and that China’s claims are completely devoid of any legal basis.