The first sighting was a square smudge on a satellite image. On May 20, commercial imagery showed nothing at the entrance of Scarborough Shoal. By May 25, something was there.
By early June the Philippine government had a name for it, a timeline and a protest note. On Wednesday, June 10, Rogelio Villanueva Jr., the Department of Foreign Affairs spokesperson for maritime affairs, told a press briefing that Manila had lodged several demarches and a formal diplomatic protest with Beijing over a floating platform inside Bajo de Masinloc, the Philippine name for the shoal.
What Manila says it found
The Philippine Coast Guard walked reporters through how the object was tracked. After the satellite image on May 25, a Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources flight the next day got a clearer photo, with one person aboard. Coast Guard spokesperson Jay Tarriela described a movable platform with a deck of about 30 square meters, ringed by fenders that would shield it while being towed. Metal supports, he said, could hold it in place.
On May 30, monitors counted six Chinese personnel standing on it, plus a newly installed antenna near the shoal entrance. Aircraft flying those surveillance missions in late May were harassed by a Chinese helicopter and a fighter jet, according to Rappler. On May 31 the platform moved deeper inside the shoal with the help of Chinese vessels.
Two Chinese research vessels were still inside the shoal at the time of the briefing. “So we can also say that they are probably conducting illegal scientific research in Bajo de Masinloc and that platform is also being used by those marine scientists,” Tarriela said. Officials admitted they did not yet know exactly what data was being collected, and said they had seen no dredging vessels.
The diplomatic response
The DFA told GMA News that it had taken “appropriate diplomatic action” against the structure, but that the contents of those exchanges were confidential. Villanueva would not say how China had answered.
His public message was blunter. “We therefore urge China to withdraw and remove the platform structures from Bajo de Masinloc,” he said, adding a call to respect the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the 2016 arbitration award. The platform, he said, is “not only a violation of the sovereignty and jurisdiction of the Philippines, but is also inconsistent with international law.”
Beijing had already spoken. A Chinese embassy spokesperson in Manila said on June 9 that China would “continue to firmly uphold its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea,” and called the 2016 award illegal. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian made a similar claim over what China calls Huangyan Island.
Echoes of Mischief Reef
Officials kept returning to one comparison. Mischief Reef, which Manila calls Panganiban Reef, is now a Chinese military base on an artificial island. When Manila first protested construction there in 1995, Beijing described it as a fisherman’s wharf. National Maritime Council spokesperson Alexander Lopez said the “nightmare of Mischief Reef is still there” and promised to do “everything it can based on the national law, based on diplomacy, based on our national policy.” He called Beijing’s method “salami slicing.”
The shoal sits about 120 nautical miles off Zambales province and more than 500 nautical miles from Hainan, Tarriela noted. China has controlled access to it since a 2012 standoff.
Sources
- Philippines to China: Remove floating platform in Bajo de Masinloc – Rappler
- PH files diplomatic protest vs China over floating structure in Bajo de Masinloc – GMA News Online
- Philippines Urges China to Remove Shoal Platform, Warns Against Artificial Island – The Epoch Times
