West PH Sea: Tarriela urges Filipinos to shed ‘defeatist mindset’

MANILA, Philippines — Filipinos should “shed our defeatist mindset,” a Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) official said on Monday, in an apparent swipe at naysayers in the country’s fight for its sovereign rights in the West Philippine Sea.

Rear Admiral Jay Tarriela, PCG spokesperson for the West Philippine Sea, made the call on Monday as the country marked National Heroes’ Day.

“Let us shed our defeatist mindset, because defeatism never represented what our heroes stood for,” Tarriela said in a statement.

“The only question they lived to answer was whether we deserved to be free as a nation — not whether we could defeat the powerful conquerors of our history!” he added.

READ: Tarriela, Chinese envoy trade barbs anew 10 years after PH arbitral win

Also on Monday, Tarriela responded to the latest remarks of the Chinese embassy, which he said now “sound like a broken record.”

“Repetitive, offering nothing new, yet never tiring of the replay — defying logic, legal argument, and at times even common sense,” the PCG spokesperson said in a statement.

The verbal tussle between Tarriela and the Chinese Embassy began when Ambassador Jing Yuan was appointed in December last year.

This time, the exchange centered on the jurisdiction over Ayungin (Second Thomas) Shoal, where the Philippine naval outpost BRP Sierra Madre has been grounded on an elevated portion of the shoal since 1999.

READ: ‘We are in our own waters’: Tarriela hits Chinese Embassy spox claim

In a Facebook post on Sunday, the embassy reiterated its claim of “indisputable” sovereignty over the shoal after China’s Ministry of National Defense urged Manila to tow away the grounded warship.

But Tarriela maintained that the warship is a commissioned vessel within the country’s exclusive economic zone and that “resupplying the personnel aboard is lawful, humanitarian, and requires no one’s permission.”

Beijing claims sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea, prompting Manila to bring the dispute to international arbitration. In 2016, an arbitral tribunal effectively affirmed the country’s sovereign rights within its 370-kilometer exclusive economic zone and rejected China’s sweeping claims. /dl