Young Filipinos set off on monthlong island protest vs China
THE YOUNG protesters will not be deterred.
The sea voyage of thousands of youth volunteers to the Kalayaan group of islands to protest China’s intrusion will push through on Tuesday despite the opposition of defense and military officials.
The group Kalayaan Atin Ito will begin the trip a day late due to delays in the arrival of some participants from the Visayas.
“The flights of some volunteers were cancelled due to inclement weather in the Visayas. We need to adjust our schedule; we will wait for all the volunteers until Tuesday,” Mariel Ipan, one of the volunteers, said.
Assert PH claim
The group plans to spend one month in the Kalayaan islands to assert the country’s claim in the face of China’s intrusion into islets and reefs in the West Philippine Sea.
This despite the objection of defense and military officials who said the journey would be too perilous and it might have implications on the ongoing arbitration case the Philippines filed against China in a United Nations arbitral tribunal.
Originally, the youths, mainly of college age, were scheduled to leave on Nov. 30. The protest is supposed to last up to Dec. 30.
Bad weather
Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin himself had asked the group not to push through with the voyage because of the bad sea conditions and the arbitration case against China.
The military also tried to discourage the volunteers, saying they could not be protected by the Armed Forces of the Philippines during the voyage.
Radio monitoring
AFP spokesperson Col. Restituto Padilla said the military would monitor the voyage only through radio communications with the help of the Philippine Coast Guard.
“They are on their own… we will only monitor them. The AFP is not directly participating since we told them that there are better alternative activities to show their support instead of traveling there,” Padilla said.
Kalayaan Atin Ito said it had 10,000 volunteers from all of the country’s 81 provinces committed to the 30-day protest.
No restricting law
The group however encountered difficulty raising funds for the protest, estimated to cost at least P1 billion.
Padilla said the volunteers will rent boats to get to Kalayaan, a municipality under the province of Palawan.
“This is not the best time to travel, the waters are rough,” Padilla said.
The youth group however decided to proceed with their journey, saying there was no law prohibiting them from doing so.
“We are optimistic the Department of National Defense and AFP will understand and eventually support our voyage because this is in support of the government’s effort to assert our rights in our own seas,” Ipan said.
