MANILA: The Philippines will not remove a dilapidated navy ship grounded on an atoll in the South China Sea, its defense chief said on Thursday, rejecting a demand by China after it blocked a mission to resupply the vessel’s crew.
Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana dismissed China’s assertion on Wednesday that the Philippines had committed to remove the BRP Sierra Madre, which was intentionally grounded at the Second Thomas shoal in 1999 to reinforce Manila’s sovereignty claims in the Spratly archipelago.
The 100 meter-long tank landing ship was built for the US Navy during World War Two.
“That ship has been there since 1999. If there was commitment it would have been removed a long time ago,” Lorenzana told reporters.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian on Wednesday said Beijing “demands the Philippine side honor its commitment and remove its illegally grounded vessel.”
The Second Thomas Shoal, 195km off Palawan, is the temporary home of a small contingent of military aboard the rusty ship, which is stuck on a reef.
Lorenzana accused China of “trespassing” when its coast guard interrupted a resupply mission for the troops.
China claims the majority of the South China Sea as its own, using a “nine-dash line” on maps that an international arbitration ruling in 2016 said has no legal basis.
The Second Thomas Shoal is within the Philippines’ 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone, as outlined in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), to which China is a signatory.
“We have two documents attesting that we have sovereign rights in our EEZ while they don’t, and their claims have no basis,” Lorenzana said.
“China should abide by its international obligations that it is part of.”
President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday told a summit hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping that he “abhors” China’s recent actions at the shoal.
Philippines rejects China’s demand to remove grounded navy ship
https://arab.news/p996e
Philippines rejects China’s demand to remove grounded navy ship
- Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana dismisses China’s assertion that the Philippines had committed to remove the BRP Sierra Madre
Federal judge accuses Trump administration of ‘terror’ against immigrants in scathing ruling
- The judge said that the White House had also “extended its violence on its own citizens”
- “The threats posed by the executive branch cannot be viewed in isolation”
CALIFRONIA: A federal judge has accused the Trump administration of terrorizing immigrants and recklessly violating the law in its efforts to deport millions of people living in the country illegally.
Citing the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota, the judge said that the White House had also “extended its violence on its own citizens.”
“The threats posed by the executive branch cannot be viewed in isolation,” US District Judge Sunshine Sykes in Riverside, California said in her scathing decision issued late Wednesday.
Sykes ordered the US Department of Homeland Security to provide detained immigrants around the country with notice of her earlier decisions that they may be eligible to seek release on bond.
Under past administrations, people with no criminal record could generally request a bond hearing before an immigration judge while their cases wound through immigration court unless they were stopped at the border. President Donald Trump ‘s White House reversed that policy in favor of mandatory detention.
Sykes, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, a Democrat, ruled in November and again in December that the change violated the law and extended her decision to immigrants nationwide. The Republican administration, however, has continued denying bond hearings.
That has prompted thousands of immigrants to file separate petitions in federal court seeking their release. More than 20,000 habeas corpus cases have been filed since Trump’s inauguration, according to federal court records analyzed by the AP.
An email Thursday to the Department of Homeland Security was not immediately returned.
Sykes said Wednesday by violating her decision, the administration had “wasted valuable time and resources” and deprived immigrants of their “liberty, economic stability, and fundamental dignity.”
She also slammed the claim that the immigration crackdown was removing the worst criminals, saying most of the people arrested did not fit that description.
“Americans have expressed deep concerns over unlawful, wanton acts by the executive branch,” she wrote. “Beyond its terror against noncitizens, the executive branch has extended its violence on its own citizens, killing two American citizens— Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota.”
