(Eagle News) — The Philippine government has protested China’s naming of five undersea features at the Philippine Rise.
This is according to Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque, who issued a statement on the matter on Wednesday.
“We object and do not recognize the Chinese names given to some undersea features in the Philippine Rise. Per our Philippine embassy in Beijing, they have already raised our concern to China,” Roque said.
According to Roque, the embassy was also looking at informing the chair of the International Hydrographic Organization – Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (IHO-IOC GEBCO) Sub-Committee on Undersea Feature Names (SCUFN) that supposedly approved the names last year.
“The Philippines, as many of you know, is not a member of the SCUFN, which is composed of 12 members. China’s proposals to rename some undersea features in the Philippine were submitted to SCUFN during its meetings in Brazil on October 12-16, 2015 and September 19-23, 2017,” Roque explained.
In a Facebook post, Jay Batongbacal, an associate professor at the University of the Philippines College of Law and director of the University of the Philippines Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea, said the features were named the “Jinghao and Tianbao Seamounts located some 70 nautical miles east of Cagayan; the Haidonquing Seamount further east at 190 nautical miles; and the Cuiqiao Hill and Jujiu Seamount that form the central peaks of the Philippine Rise undersea geological province itself.”
He said all were “within 200 nautical miles of the east coast of Luzon, not in the region of the extended continental shelf but well within the “legal” continental shelf,” or “within 200 nautical miles, where the coastal State’s rights are ipso facto and ab initio and do not need to undergo a claim process.”
Earlier, President Rodrigo Duterte reiterated that the Philippine Rise–formerly named Benham Rise–was the Philippines’.