Sharks and minnows

It’s a seemingly never ending, nerve wracking game of sharks and minnows; every Filipino fisherman or every man guarding our seas may feel extra jittery nowadays whenever the job takes them to the disputed waters, sweaty even in the cold, biting sea breeze.

Nobody knows for sure how it will end, this lingering geopolitical spat between Manila and Beijing.

For now, what is clear is that the  tensions between sea authorities from both the Philippines and China are as strong as the current and the towering waves in the disputed seas.

Dangerous maneuvers of Chinese ships continue and the aggressive actions have not abated, says the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

On Friday the 13th, as the AFP reported, China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy Ship 621 shadowed our very own, the Philippine Navy (PN)’s BRP Benguet at an 80-yard distance and attempted to cross its bow at 5.8 Nautical Miles SouthWest of Pag-asa Island.

Our vessel was en-route to Rizal Reef Station for a resupply mission.

Will this dispute ever end? When and how?

I listened to Justice Antonio Carpio, a true patriot and staunch defender of our sovereignty, last week to hear his recommendation on how the Philippines can finally resolve this issue.

There I was inside the august halls of the University of the Philippines College of Law’s Malcolm Hall in Diliman, listening intently as Justice Carpio gave his lecture titled “Philippine Island Territories in the West Philippine Sea.”

The lecture, part of the Magister Lecture Series, was organized by the UP College of Law Constitutional Law Cluster and Justice George Malcolm Foundation Inc., in cooperation with the Integrated Bar of the Philippines Law Journal.

It’s fitting that the talk was held in a school that teaches law because Justice Carpio said the best way to defend the country’s sovereignty is through the rule of law.

As he has been doing for years now, the former Supreme Court associate justice once again laid down facts, pointed to ancient maps and discussed the three treaties that define Philippine territory:

The 1898 Treaty of Paris, which ceded to the United States the archipelago known as the Philippine Islands lying within the Paris Treaty