A bully is defined as “a blustering, browbeating person, especially one who is habitually cruel, insulting or threatening to others who are weaker, smaller, or in some way vulnerable.” And bullying is the act of “causing someone to do something by means of force or coercion.”
This definition, though, has a flip side. For when confronted by someone who is stronger, bigger or more powerful, the bully turns into a patsy, suddenly reduced to a craven, sniveling coward. The transformed bully is then bullied in turn, rushing to do the new overlord’s bidding.
This is the scenario now playing out in the wake of the ramming of a Filipino fishing boat by a Chinese vessel, which caused the FB Gem-Vir 1 to sink. The Chinese vessel then turned on its lights and, after seeing the Filipino fishers thrashing in the sea, turned off its lights and fled the scene.
Now disputed, the story outline is being “investigated” by Filipino authorities, though it is based on the first, early accounts of the Filipino fishers and of their Vietnamese rescuers.
One would think, as former Filipino diplomat (to the Asean) Wilfrido Villacorta told a TV interviewer, that “we should first believe our fellow Filipinos before (we believe) foreigners.”
But this simple formula is being turned on its head by the nation’s current leaders and their mercenary partisans. The administration’s army of trolls, both named and unnamed, have ganged up on the 22 victims of what can only be described as Chinese aggression in our own waters.
Unanimously, it seems, they assert that the fishermen are at fault, that they are too ignorant to be credible, that their eyewitness accounts are illogical and fantastic, that those who were present when the ramming took place and spent miserable hours in the dark sea are lying and those who heard the story only from far away know better.
Of course, these attack dogs are only taking their cue from those in government. After keeping an uncharacteristic silence in the days following the near-tragedy, President Duterte dismissed the boat-ramming as a mere “maritime accident,” downgrading the fishermen’s contention that the ramming had been intentional.
Even Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, who at the start expressed outrage over the boat sinking, has seemingly softened his stand, now “entertaining doubts that the Chinese ship intended to bump the Filipino boat.”
Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol, dispatched to the fishers’ hometown, managed to fish out a witness to the contrary, boat cook Richard Blaza (who was the only one awake at the time, he claimed) who said he was “unsure” whether it had been a ramming or an accidental but severe bumping.
Later, after failing to bring fishing boat captain Junel Insigne to a purported meeting with the President, Piñol led a police force in full battle gear to Insigne’s home for a “dialogue.”
It was a painful sight, indeed: the boat captain clad in a pitiful undershirt apologizing to the President for disputing Mr. Duterte’s version of events, capped by a photo-op with everyone thrusting out the trademark Duterte fist at the Filipino public.
This, even as Chinese authorities themselves admitted to the “accident” and excused their vessel’s failure to come to the fishers’ aid by citing the alleged but proven to the contrary presence of other Filipino boats which they said were about to “besiege” them.
One thought: If the other boats were indeed nearby, why was the rescue of the beleaguered fishers carried out by a Vietnamese vessel?
The latest development in this saga of infamy and treason by Filipino officials is that China has “agreed” to a joint inquiry into what the President insists was a mere “accident” at sea. One can only make an educated, cynical guess at the conclusion of the investigation, since, after all, Filipino officials and their rabid minions have already twisted the story around.
This is what bullying gets you: a scenario of stupidity, and the downgrading, nay, crushing of a nation’s dignity. Given the way the story is being reversed, and the fishers’ abysmal treatment by the very same people who should be protecting and defending them, one shouldn’t be surprised if, after the facts of the boat-ramming have faded from memory, the fishermen will be told that it was all their fault.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer (Editorial)
• Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:07 AM June 23, 2019
https://opinion.inquirer.net/122145/bullies-and-cowards
Thank you, Vietnam
Between friends, words can sometimes be superfluous.
When two Filipino fishermen reached a Vietnamese fishing boat to seek help after being abandoned in open sea by a Chinese vessel that had rammed and sunk their boat shortly before midnight on June 9, gestures were enough to get through the language barrier. The Filipinos asked for help and pointed toward Recto (Reed) Bank, where the rest of the crew of the capsized Gem-Vir 1 fishing vessel was.
Vietnamese boat captain Nguyen Thanh Tam and his men hauled the shivering pair onboard, then set sail toward the site some 9 kilometers away, where they found 20 other Filipino fishers—“tired, hungry and cold”—trying to keep afloat with life vests amid the debris of their sunken vessel. When the Filipinos were finally safe aboard the Vietnamese boat, given food, kept warm and made to rest, a reassuring mutual sentiment emerged among the men from two different countries: “Vietnam. Philippines. Friends.”
The most basic response the Philippines could have offered the Vietnamese for their compassionate gesture was a simple “Thank you.” How hard is it for the Duterte administration to do that—to reach out to the Vietnamese government and, through it, to formally thank the Vietnamese seafarers who saved our fishermen from their ordeal?
Instead, in a bizarre, contemptible turn of events, Agriculture Secretary Manny Piñol made a big to-do about the Vietnamese being in the area illegally, poaching inside the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ), and so whatever thanks they deserved had to given begrudgingly: “Salamat sa mga Vietnamese sa pagtulong pero you are not supposed to be there but thank God you were there. That was an illegal act that was actually providential.”
What appalling ungraciousness, and a most shameful stain on a country that, until lately, prided itself on its friendliness and sense of goodwill toward other nations. But apparently Piñol has no trouble smearing the Philippines this way, because he, and the administration he represents, has a grander design in mind—to deflect attention from the true culprit in this issue. As Singapore-based maritime expert Collin Koh keenly noted: “The level of ridiculousness has reached absurd levels when you realized that the focus has shifted strangely from the perpetrator to the savior.”
The perpetrator, of course, was the Chinese vessel that, according to the Filipino fishermen’s straightforward initial accounts, rammed their boat while they were anchored in Recto Bank for the night, and then abandoned them in the waters. That firm and clear story began wavering, however, after the Duterte administration unembarrassedly lined up behind the Chinese Embassy’s dismissive characterization of the incident as an “ordinary maritime accident”—a line President Duterte himself parroted and rephrased into “a little maritime accident.”
And to enforce that official narrative, Piñol, backed up by a police contingent in full riot gear, marched into boat captain Junel Insigne’s home for a closed-door meeting and emerged later with the fishermen stammering out a hazier version of their ordeal, unsure now whether the Chinese vessel had indeed targeted them intentionally. At the end of the Soviet-style abject show they were made to do before the cameras by Piñol, they had to do the Duterte fist-bump salute—but of course.
The fishermen’s humiliation was complete. The Vietnamese were called out for their poaching in Philippine waters—but the Chinese, who were trespassing as much inside the Philippine EEZ and, worse, had engaged in reprehensible behavior (perhaps even criminal under international law), were, for all intents and purposes, free from reproach.
Duterte partisans have had a field day trying to discredit the story of the Filipino fishermen with outré conspiracy theories, chiefly that the assault against them was supposedly staged to embarrass the President. But the Vietnamese crewmen’s account of the rescue perfectly corroborated the Filipinos’ story, thus pulling the rug out from under the profoundly revolting, unpatriotic attempt to brutalize the 22 fishermen a second time just to save the hide of this administration.
Those Vietnamese seafarers are not, and presumably have no wish to be, party to byzantine Philippine politics. In the hour of distress of their Filipino counterparts, they simply did their duty as human beings, which was to help save lives. Even as the Philippine government is flagrantly unwilling to stand by its traumatized citizens, the Vietnamese—whose own vessels have suffered repeated aggression by China—offered friendship, solidarity, a humanitarian hand. For that, from a grateful Filipino people: Thank you, Vietnam. Cảm ơn bạn.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer (Editorial)
• Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:16 AM June 21, 2019
https://opinion.inquirer.net/122109/thank-you-vietnam
In aid of Beijing
Is Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi a psychic? He must think himself so, because after only a cursory inspection of the wrecked Filipino fishing boat that its 22-man crew said was rammed by a Chinese vessel on June 9 off Recto Bank, Cusi was confident enough to brush off the fishermen’s charge that they were deliberately targeted and declare that it was all an accident.
The damage to the stern of FB Gem-Vir 1 didn’t look extensive enough, he maintained; therefore, the Chinese vessel’s action couldn’t have been intentional.
“Kung talagang babanggain eh bakit yung… Kung sa kwan ba … sasabihin nating ‘Napakabulok naman ’yung babangga, daplis lang,’” Cusi was quoted as saying in a GMA 7 report. “I mean, kung meant to kill and meant to … Siyempre, ididiretso mo na.” (If they intended to ram, we could say they were bad at it, as they only grazed the boat. If it was meant to kill, then they should have done it frontally.)
But if it was an accident, why did the Chinese abandon the Filipino fishermen floundering on the waters? This time Cusi had no answer — the psychic connection with the Chinese failed? — and said he would defer to any future investigation.
Cusi also chairs Mimaropa’s Cabinet Officers for Regional Development and Security and thus may be said to have a say on this matter. But what business does he have playing, first, an authority on boat collisions at this point when no formal investigation has even been started, and second, an ersatz mind reader able not only to divine the intentions of the Chinese crew aboard their wayward vessel, but also to essentially excuse their actions?
Cusi’s first duty as a Filipino, let alone as one of the highest officials of the land, is to lend support and compassion to the brutalized Filipino fishermen, and, more to the point, to call for justice on their behalf. It is not his job to lawyer for the Chinese side and belittle the ordeal his countrymen had gone through.
Unless, of course, those are his marching orders? Cusi’s behavior, after all, is of a piece with what appears to be the tack the Duterte administration has adopted to contain the ramifications of this potentially flashpoint incident: once again appease Beijing by tamping down the outrage of the Filipino public, even if that means meekly accepting, and being made idiots by, that country’s absurd justifications for the incident.
China first claimed it was a “normal maritime accident.” Presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said the Chinese ambassador had assured him — in a text message, as if this was the most trifling issue — that Beijing was “thoroughly and seriously” probing the matter.
The Chinese Embassy then released a statement offering its own detailed version of the incident — and it is such a ridiculous version that the Chinese government must really think Filipinos, and the international community, are stupid enough to swallow its bullshit.
The accident happened, according to the statement, when a fishing boat from Guandong, China, which was “berthed” at the vicinity of Recto Bank, was “suddenly besieged by 7 or 8 Filipino fishing boats.” As it tried to evacuate, its steel cable supposedly bumped into the Filipino fishing boat, which then “tilted and its stern foundered.”
“The captain (of the Chinese ship) then tried to rescue the Filipino fishermen, but was afraid of being besieged by other Filipino fishing boats.” After seeing that the Filipinos were rescued by other Filipino boats, the Chinese boat sailed away. This, the statement added, proves that it was not a case of “hit-and-run.”
Junel Insigne, captain of the FB Gem-Vir 1, debunks the Chinese story first with the unassailable fact that it was a Vietnamese boat that rescued them and not any other Filipino boat nearby; and second with the unassailable force of logic: “Lumubog nga kami, kami pa ang aatake?” (We went under, how could we be the attackers?)
Insigne, as of this writing, has backed out of a meeting with President Duterte in Malacañang, reportedly on the advice of his wife. They have reason to be wary: Beijing’s fudging, twisting and lying on this issue have only been aided by the deafening silence of the President, more than a week since the incident.
Worse, when the 22 fishermen were rescued, shameless administration lackeys made the still-traumatized fishermen pose for the camera with the Duterte fist-bump salute, right on the rescue boat. Insigne, no doubt, would have been asked to do the same in Malacañang. He and his hapless colleagues are good enough for a propaganda photo op, but as for their tale of woe? As Cusi put it, “daplis lang.”
The Philippine Daily Inquirer (Editorial)
• Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:08 AM June 18, 2019
https://opinion.inquirer.net/122049/in-aid-of-beijing
Hit-and-run on the high seas
Was it an accidental collision between two moving objects? An “allision”—the “bumping of two vessels one of which was stationary,” as Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. put it in a tweet? Or a case of outright ramming—because, according to former Philippine Navy chief Alexander Pama, the Filipino fishing boat, the F/B Gimver 1, was anchored near Recto Bank when it figured in an accident with a Chinese vessel on the evening of June 9, sinking the Filipino boat and throwing its 22 crewmen overboard? (The Filipino fishermen were eventually rescued by a Vietnamese boat.)
Locsin is having none of Pama’s dire characterization of the incident just yet. “Ramming,” he said in the same tweet, “is another thing altogether requiring proof of intentionality.” Of course, the chief diplomat also had to throw in his usual quota of bile and snark directed at fellow citizens enraged over the incident: “So far as I know none of us is a mind reader not least because some of us have no mind with which to read another.”
AMind reading, though, is not necessary to judge the actions of the Chinese vessel after the incident. The exact circumstances of the event should be up for determination by a future investigation. But, at this point, there is no sailing around this damnable fact: The Chinese ship acted reprehensibly—in a “contemptible and condemnable” manner, as Locsin did say—when it abandoned the 22 Filipino fishermen “to the mercy of the elements.”
Those last words are from Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, who, in a gesture that spoke volumes, released a statement under his name on June 12, the Philippines’ Independence Day, “condemning in the strongest terms” the Chinese vessel “for immediately leaving the scene of the incident.” Such behavior “is not the expected action from a responsible and friendly people,” said Lorenzana.
International maritime law is clear on the obligations of any vessel that encounters any person in distress at sea. Daniel Shepherd, a crew member of Sea-Watch, the German aid group that figured prominently in the rescue of migrants during the Mediterranean refugee crisis, explained the law in a May 2015 post in The Maritime Executive:
“Article 98 (1) of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 (UNCLOS) requires masters of vessels sailing under the flag of signatory States to render assistance to those in distress at sea. It is primarily a State duty fulfilled by the master of the vessel. The master is freed from this requirement only in circumstances where the assisting vessel, the crew or the passengers on board would be seriously endangered as a result of rendering assistance to those in distress.
“Other international conventions iterate this requirement and the attendant limitation. Regulation V/33 of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea 1974 (SOLAS) imposes an obligation on masters of vessels who are in a position to provide assistance to do so. Further, Chapter 2.1.10 of the International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue 1979 (SAR) obliges States Party to the Convention to ensure that assistance is provided to any person in distress at sea, ‘regardless of the nationality or status of such a person or the circumstances in which that person is found.’
“Finally, the position at treaty law with respect to the duty to render assistance is a general reflection of customary international maritime law. This means that masters of vessels flying the flag of non-signatory States are also required to render assistance where safe and able to do so.
“The law is therefore clear. States, both signatories and non-signatories to the above conventions, are duty bound to ensure those in distress at sea are rendered assistance on a non-discriminatory basis. Whether vessels sailing under their flag operate in either a private or public capacity, the requirements incumbent upon the masters of the vessels are the same.”
Is China a signatory to Unclos? It is. Those Chinese crewmen knew the first and most sacred duty of seafaring, which is to provide aid to fellow human beings in distress at sea. That they chose to engage instead in what amounted to a hit-and-run on the high seas indicates the opposite intent: They wanted to leave the Filipino fishermen in distress. That is barbaric, despicable, unacceptable behavior.
What will the Beijing-loving President say? Malacañang has called on China to sanction the hit-and-run vessel, but tellingly, as of this writing, nearly 24 hours after Lorenzana’s report to the nation, the customarily pugnacious Mr. Duterte has himself not said a word about the matter.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer (Editorial)
• Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:14 AM June 14, 2019
https://opinion.inquirer.net/121968/hit-and-run-on-the-high-seas