‘Ukraine of Asia’: pro-Duterte coalition slams Philippines’ involvement in US ‘proxy war’ with China

At the end of the launch event for the Citizens’ Coalition Against War in Manila on Wednesday, the group released a petition calling for signatures supporting an end to the proxy war as well as a manifesto criticising the government’s position on the Second Thomas Shoal, a highly contested maritime landmark in the South China Sea that the Philippine refers to as Ayungin and Beijing calls Ren’ai Jiao.

The coalition, led by Herman Tiu Laurel, founder of the Philippine-Brics Strategic Studies think tank and board chairman of the Association for Philippines-China Understanding, objected to the Philippines defending its territorial rights over the shoal, saying: “The Ayungin incidents have been described as Chinese ‘aggression’, but appear to be a valid response to the US-BBM EDCA military ‘provocations’.”

BBM refers to President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr’s nickname “Bongbong” while EDCA is the abbreviation for the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement, which the Philippine government signed with the US, allowing the latter’s troops to have a rotational presence inside Philippine military facilities.

The coalition’s petition states: “We strongly reject, as the world must reject, the false narrative that China has acted as ‘a naked aggressor’ in these non-lethal incidents. To begin with, China has been circumspect in making sure that no weapons of war were used, and there were no fatalities in these unfortunate incidents.”

The text of the petition also argues that the United States’ “pivot to Asia” strategy – aimed at strengthening Washington’s bilateral security alliances with a number of countries in the continent – “has led to the escalation of tensions in the region, using the Philippines, among others as a strategic pawn in its