Celebrating victory
Every Filipino should know what we won, why we won, and why it matters. Because sovereignty is not defended only by ships and soldiers; it is also defended by memory, law, history and legitimacy.
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Daily TribuneEvery Filipino should know what we won, why we won, and why it matters. Because sovereignty is not defended only by ships and soldiers; it is also defended by memory, law, history and legitimacy.
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THIS handout photo taken on 21 March last year and received from the Philippine Coast Guard and Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources shows an aerial view of Filipino scientists inspecting Sandy Cay reef, near the Philippine-held Thitu Island, in Spratly Islands. Inset, taken on 27 April this year shows Philippine Coast Guard and military personnel holding a Philippine flag during an inter-agency maritime operation in Sandy Cay 2. The Philippines on 28 April slammed an ‘irresponsible’ Chinese state media report claiming a disputed reef in the South China Sea was under Beijing’s control, saying the status quo was unchanged.
PHOTOGRAPHs COURTESY OF National Task Force on West Philippine Sea/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
This past Sunday marked 10 years since the Philippines won one of the most important legal victories in its history.
On 12 July 2016, an arbitral tribunal constituted under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea handed down its ruling in the case filed by the Philippines against China.
The court rejected China’s sweeping nine-dash line claim. It affirmed that certain areas, including Mischief Reef and Ayungin Shoal, fell within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone and continental shelf. It held that China had unlawfully interfered with Filipino fishing rights at Scarborough Shoal. It also found that China’s massive reclamation and construction activities had caused serious harm to the marine environment.
In plain English: We won; China lost.
And we won because President Noynoy Aquino had the foresight and the courage to take China to court.
That point should not be forgotten. At a time when Chinese encroachment in the West Philippine Sea was becoming more aggressive, PNoy did not respond with empty machismo or performative chest-beating. He chose the harder, quieter, more serious path. He invoked the law. He went to the international community. He put the Philippine case before a tribunal and secured a ruling that gave our position legitimacy before the nations of the world.
Unfortunately, the ruling came out after the election of Rodrigo Duterte, the same man who had loudly promised during the campaign to personally defend Philippine sovereignty on a jet ski.
Once in office, however, the swagger vanished. Duterte repeatedly minimized the arbitral victory. He said he would “set aside” the ruling. Later, he dismissed it as just a piece of paper that he would throw into the wastebasket. All that bravado, it turned out, was reserved for campaign rallies, not Beijing.
And while Duterte bent over backward to appease China, Chinese vessels continued to swarm Philippine waters, harass Filipino fishermen and press their presence in our own exclusive economic zone.
The Whitsun Reef incident in 2021, involving hundreds of Chinese vessels, should have shattered the fantasy that friendship with Beijing would moderate its behavior. It did not. Like the bully it is, China pocketed the appeasement offered up by Duterte and kept pushing.
Ten years after our arbitral victory, the lesson should be clear. The arbitral ruling is not a relic. It is not a framed certificate to be admired once a year. It is a living legal weapon, a foundation for diplomacy, alliances, education and national pride.
It should be taught in schools. Every Filipino should know what we won, why we won, and why it matters. Because sovereignty is not defended only by ships and soldiers; it is also defended by memory, law, history and legitimacy.
The recent absurd claim by Chinese scholars that Batanes somehow belongs to China because it is supposedly a natural extension of Taiwan shows exactly why this matters. Territorial aggression does not always begin with ships appearing on the horizon. Sometimes it begins with a theory, a self-serving map, a fake historical narrative, repeated until people start treating nonsense as a legal claim.
That is why legitimacy matters. China may have the bigger fleet. It may make the louder threats. But in this fight, the law is on our side. The nations of the world stand with us. The ruling gave us that decisively.
We should honor that. Teach it. Use it. Build alliances around it.
And most of all, we should never again allow any president to treat one of our greatest national victories as a mere piece of paper.
