Chinese illegal activities compel PH to defend itself - DND chief
Philippine News Agency
By Priam Nepomuceno
January 26, 2025, 12:00 pm Updated on January 26, 2025, 12:27 pm
MANILA -- China's illegal activities on the country's waters are forcing the Philippines to defend itself and assert its rights, Department of National Defense (DND) Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. said.
"What is being done to the Philippines is forcible stealing of its rights, sovereign rights, in the exclusive economic zone which the Philippines has the sole right to explore, exploit resources in, by China. And doing this through not only words but through muscle," he said during a recent interview with Hoover Institution's "Battlegrounds".
The DND chief was referring to China's illegal activities in the West Philippine Sea where Chinese maritime forces continue to swarm.
This was the offshoot of the Chinese enactment of a maritime law that claimed almost all of the South China Sea (SCS) waters as internal waters of China.
"So what I'm trying to say right now is for the Philippines, what China is doing makes the Philippines, compels the Philippines to defend itself, assert its rights against China," Teodoro said.
"So they have themselves to blame. If we are choosing the side of the right, the correct, not the physical right, but the correct side, the correct path, to use their words, take the right path and correct route," he added.
Teodoro said China is also trying to crowd out the country by "trying to change narratives, trying to subvert our domestic economy, trying to influence others not to side with the Philippines."
He added it includes telling the world that the 2016 Arbitral Award is just "a scrap of paper."
The 2016 Arbitral Ruling is where the Permanent Court of Arbitration declared that the nine-dash-line of China has no legal basis. (PNA)
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