Senator Robin Padilla and Coast Guard spokesperson Rear Admiral Jay Tarriela continued to trade sharp statements on Saturday over the government’s messaging on the South China Sea dispute, extending a row that erupted after China released an AI-generated video portraying Filipinos as monkeys.

On 10 July, Chinese state-run newspaper China Daily released an AI-generated video that portrayed Filipinos as monkeys while referencing the 2016 arbitral ruling that invalidated China’s sweeping claims in the South China Sea.

The government condemned the material as “demeaning, dehumanizing, and racist” and filed a diplomatic protest demanding its removal.

Tarriela, who has been one of the most visible figures behind the Philippine Coast Guard’s (PCG) public disclosure of maritime confrontations with Chinese vessels, rejected Padilla’s criticism of Manila’s messaging campaign.

23“Senator Robin Padilla, with all due respect, our transparency initiative is not wartime propaganda. It is simply a means to expose Chinese aggression and harassment — particularly against Filipino fishermen and our PCG and BFAR vessels. We do not create the incidents; we only document them,” Tarriela said.

He accused Padilla of downplaying the insult to Filipinos in the Chinese video. “Secondly, I believe it is an insult to the more than 26 million Filipinos who voted for you that you accepted the notion that we are monkeys,” Tarriela said.

“This is not the view of white supremacists. This is the perspective of the Chinese government itself — they created and circulated that video,” he added.

Tarriela said accepting the depiction of Filipinos as monkeys would amount to accepting an attack on our people’s dignity.