Dr. Renato de Castro, Trustee and Convenor of the National Security and East Asian Affairs Program, Stratbase ADR Institute One year ago, at midnight of June 9, 2019, a Chinese fishing vessel suddenly rammed and sank a wooden Filipino fishing boat, the F/B Gim Vir 1, which was anchored at the Reed Bank. The captain… Read More

Dr. Renato de Castro, Trustee and Convenor of the National Security and East Asian Affairs Program, Stratbase ADR Institute On June 2, 2020, Philippine television channels aired the breaking news Foreign Secretary Teodoro “Teddy Boy” Locsin Jr. announcing that the government has suspended the Philippine-U.S. Visiting Force Agreement’s (VFA) termination “in the light of “the… Read More

Dindo Manhit, President, Stratbase ADR Institute The world continues to struggle with how to contain the transmission and mitigate the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. More than 416,000 people worldwide are reported to have died from COVID-19, and more than 7.3 million confirmed positive cases have been recorded so far. World Health Organization (WHO) officials… Read More

Paco A. Pangalangan, Executive Director, Stratbase ADR Institute Last week I saw a video circulating on Facebook of a bicycle shop owner giving a teary-eyed street vendor his dream bicycle after noticing that the man had been coming into the shop week after week just to ask about it. Last month, I read about a… Read More

THE WPS: A LONG STRUGGLE AHEAD June 9, 2020 Justice Antonio T. Carpio Good morning to everyone. Let me commend the ADR Institute for continuing to hold fora like this to remind us that we must continue to defend our sovereign rights in the WPS. Otherwise, in the near future our fishing boats will not… Read More

DEMANDING JUSTICE FROM CHINA By Ambassador Albert Del Rosario Chair, Stratbase ADR Institute 9 June 2020 As the world struggles with the COVID-19 pandemic, today reminds us that it has been exactly a year after agents of the Chinese State rammed into a small wooden fishing boat called the F/B Gem-Ver 1 in Reed Bank,… Read More

Despite the COVID-19 outbreak, China continues to pursue its maritime expansionism in the region. It has taken its regional security agenda further by establishing administrative districts in the South China Sea, escalating confrontations with the Philippines, Japan and Malaysia, blocking Vietnamese fishing rights, and even creating tension in its shared land border with India. We… Read More