MANILA, Philippines — The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) on Monday expressed full support for calls of lawmakers to take a whole of government approach to countering China’s state-sponsored disinformation.
"The AFP acknowledges and fully supports the call of lawmakers, led by House Spokesperson Representative Robert Ace Barbers, urging regulatory authorities to take decisive action against foreign state-sponsored malign influence campaigns,” Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad, AFP spokesman for the West Philippine Sea said in a statement.
House prosecution panel adviser and spokesperson Robert Ace Barbers urged the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) and other government agencies to crack down on China-linked propaganda pages spreading misinformation about the West Philippine Sea (WPS), specifically citing Facebook page Media Unlocked.
Barbers said the NTC should apply the same restrictions it has on pornographic sites, while also calling for an official, frame-by-frame explainer to debunk misleading claims and help Filipino youth distinguish fake news from factual information.
Trinidad said defending the West Philippine Sea is not only fought in waters and airspace but likewise contested in the digital and information domains.
“Foreign Malign Influence (FMI) operations - executed through coordinated online proxy accounts, deceptive media outlets, and psychological manipulation - are done to divide our nation, erode public trust in national security institutions, shape public perception and justify unlawful acts in our Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ),” Trinidad said.
“It is for these reasons that we emphasize the need to recognize FMI as a national security threat,” he said.
Rewriting BRP Sierra Madre
Over the weekend, the AFP quickly made a push back on the Chinese Embassy in Manila’s attempt at rewriting history when it posted its version on why and how the BRP Sierra Madre, Manila’s military outpost in the West Philippine Sea, ended up in Ayungin (Second Thomas) Shoal, a hotly contested flashpoint where the Philippines and Chinese maritime forces often figure in violent tensions.
On Saturday, the Chinese Embassy posted their version of how the BRP Sierra Madre, a wartime ship, got to Ayungin Shoal and how it was made into a Philippine military outpost in the West Philippine Sea.
“In May 1999 the Philippines deliberately grounded a World War II warship on China’s Ren’ai Jiao, lying that it had “leaking problems” and needed “emergency repairs,” the Chinese Embassy said.
The Embassy said China immediately “lodged formal protests and demanded that the ship be towed away.”
“The Philippine side promised, again and again, that it would tow that rusty hulk out of there. It has been 27 years and the ship is still to be towed away. China demands the broken ship be towed way immediately,” the Chinese Embassy said.
The AFP struck back with an example of Beijing deceptive narratives with a well-documented evolution from their initial promise to how it became years later.
“Let us look back to 1995 when the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) first illegally occupied Panganiban Reef (Mischief Reef)—a feature within our EEZ (exclusive economic zone),” the AFP said.
“IT IS ON RECORD that their foreign ministry leadership assured the Philippines and the international community the small, octagonal wooden structures built on stilts were merely "shelters for local fishermen" and explicitly promised that these temporary structures possessed no military purpose,” the statement continued.
“Today, those ‘shelters’ have been transformed into a fortified, 550-hectare military airbase complete with a 3,000-meter runway, missile emplacements, radar domes and naval berths.
Mischief Reef stands as a permanent, concrete monument to their deceptive strategy in the West Philippine Sea,” the AFP said.
Unlike Beijing’s illegal island-building and militarization of low-tide elevations inside Manila’s EEZ, the AFP reiterated that the presence of the BRP Sierra Madre on Ayungin Shoal “is a lawful, permanent sovereign deployment on a feature over which we exercise sovereign rights and jurisdiction.”
Manila’s legal right to the West Philippine Sea is affirmed by the 2016 Arbitral Tribunal which ruled that Ayungin Shoal is a low-tide elevation w/in our EEZ and that China's claims are completely devoid of any legal basis.
The AFP also said there is “no binding commitment made to remove the BRP Sierra Madre from Ayungin Shoal.”
