Heartless at sea
It broke my heart to learn that a Chinese coast guard (CCG) vessel’s crew merely looked on and did not lift a finger while a Filipino fishing vessel was sending a distress call on behalf of its ailing crew. This CCG vessel must be one of those that keep chasing away Filipino fishermen or deliberately encroaching on the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the West Philippine Sea. The CCG reportedly even made it hard for the Filipino fishing boat to maneuver and get near the responding Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) ship. The Filipino fishermen’s boat was about 70 nautical miles southwest of Silanguin Island when its distress call was sent.
The EEZ has been a contentious area between China and the Philippines that has resulted in several skirmishes and even deaths of Filipino fishermen, who were simply trying to earn a living from an area that gave them sea bounties for generations but is now off limits to them. The chasing game intensified when the Duterte presidency in its early years made a shameless “pivot” toward China for puzzling reasons, emboldening further the deadly fire-breathing dragon in its hegemonic ambitions in our part of the world. That, despite the Philippines winning an unprecedented, groundbreaking international arbitral ruling for its claims.
But for Filipino fishermen to send a distress call that has nothing to do with sovereignty rights, to not be extended help by a nearby vessel is another story. One Filipino fisherman died before help from the PCG’s BRP Cabra could reach the area to save him. The fatality was identified as Elpidio Lamban, 58, of Subic, Zambales.
Under international maritime law, all ships at sea—without exception, I presume—are obliged to provide assistance to persons in distress at sea. (I don’t know where pirates who take international cargo ships and Filipino crew hostage figure in this law. Should these evildoers save and be saved?) According to this law, “the duty to rescue at sea applies everywhere and to all ships equally. Coastal states must ensure that every person in distress at sea is helped. Subsequently, there is an obligation under international law to bring those rescued from distress at sea to a safe place on land as quickly as possible.”
Refugees who embark on perilous voyages aboard decrepit boats that capsize and fall apart in mid ocean have been at the center of this law. Saving lives is paramount and so is signaling for help. (From my Girl Scout days, I learned the Morse code for SOS, how to send/flash one and how to recognize one. Ayan.)
The recent case of Filipino fishermen making a distress call was a simple one. How heartless of those who knew what was happening and did not extend help or make it easy for help to come.
In a press conference, a PCG spokesman said the CCG “never attempted to give assistance, they even shadowed the boat and the Coast Guard vessel making it hard for the Filipinos to get near” the rescuing vessel.
I expect that such a story would be repeated again and again, just as it has happened again and again in the past. It is always the small fisherfolk who suffer, they who go out to sea in good weather and bad to find catch in what used to be waters brimming with bounty, freely, and without fear.
A PCG official quoted a Chinese ambassador as saying that no high-grade lasers were beamed toward Filipino vessels, that such lasers could be bought from Shopee. Such effrontery.
This latest incident might look small compared with past, more dramatic encounters like the one that involved fishermen from Palawan whose fishing boat was rammed by a Chinese vessel causing destruction, death, and injury. But it is the small cases that test the kindness in the heart of humans.
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On another note, the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland was commemorated a few days ago. Auschwitz was one of several camps in Hitler-occupied Europe where hundreds of thousands of Jews (of the six million killed) were gassed to death by Hitler’s Nazi operatives. It was in these horrible settings that countless captives stood out because of their moral courage, kindness, and faith. Many great human beings suffered and died in the concentration camps, among them, Maximilian Kolbe, Titus Brandsma, and Edith Stein (Carmelite contemplative Sister Teresa Benedicta), who were later canonized by the Catholic Church. Great writers and thinkers emerged from there like Viktor Frankl, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Elie Wiesel, to name a few. Artists and scientists, too, and individuals whose written works live on after they lost their lives. Like Ann Frank’s.
In the Holocaust movie “The Pianist,” a Nazi officer is near tears as he listens to a Jew he caught in hiding (Adrien Brody) playing Chopin’s Nocturne in C# minor. An OMG/Mein Gott moment.
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