SURIGAO del Norte Rep. Robert Ace S. Barbers expressed his side about the bullying of Chinese coast guard members to members of Philippine Coast Guard and Filipino fishermen while inside the Philippine territory on Feb 6.
“Now that China has finally owned up to its cowardly act of bullying us in our territorial seas, we condemn in the strongest terms these acts of aggression,” Barbers said.
“We call on our fellow Filipinos to stand united and rally behind our President as he expresses our frustrations and protests diplomatically. We cannot anymore keep quiet and endure in silence. We have suffered long enough. Our fishermen have been directly victimized. As if it was not enough, they now provoked our military and committed an act of military aggression,” Barbers added.
“We call on our allies to help us in the implementation of the arbitral ruling that gave us territorial jurisdiction over the seas now being occupied illegally and without an iota of basis neither in history nor in International Law, by China,” Barbers said.
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