Philippines will continue arresting Vietnamese fishing within territorial waters

April 9, 2019

The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) will continue to arrest Vietnamese fishing within the country's territorial waters.

Admiral Elson Hermogino, the PCG Commandant, made the clarification in a press conference in Manila after Vietnam Ambassador to the Philippines Ly Quoc Tuan visited Coast Guard headquarters on Monday.

“If this is within the well-defined territory or jurisdiction like the 12 nautical miles, because they (Vietnam) have fishing fleet that reaches here in Sulu Sea in the Tubbataha area. But once they are inside, there will be no questions, they will be arrested for violation of our fisheries law,” he said.

Tuan visited the PCG headquarters and paid a courtesy call to Hermogino on Monday morning.

Hermogino said he discussed with Tuan the draft of proposed memorandum of agreement between the Philippine and Vietnam Coast Guard which includes possible cooperation, especially with regards to law enforcement operation.

“We just work on our draft on proposed memorandum of agreement between the PCG and the Vietnamese Coast Guard (VCG) so it includes the possible cooperation and especially in the law enforcement areas because there (have) been a lot of contacts between specially the Vietnamese fishermen,” he said.

“We talked about how we could work together to prevent conflict by telling them about the prohibitions, to inform their fishermen,” he added.

Hermogino said Vietnamese fishermen who were just passing or were seen at the boundary of Philippine territorial waters will not be arrested.

“We have what we call our exclusive economic zone. Within our territory if they were caught fishing within our territory they will be arrested, But if they are just passing, if there is no act of fishing, we will try to move them away.

Hermogino said the agreement aims to improve relationships between Vietnam and the Philippines' Coast Guards.

“We have hotline with the Vietnam Coast Guard,, if there are issues,  we will use the hotline to settle differences. So if there’s a clear violation of our laws but the purpose is to advise their authorities that their fishing fleet have committed violations  we're just informing them,'' said Hermogino.

''If its within the conflict areas so through this hotline… these Vietnamese fishing fleet as per advisory... if they were seen within our exclusive economic zone (EEZ) or territory (we) guide them away from our areas,” he said.

Last month, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said the Philippines and Vietnam have reached a verbal agreement not to arrest fishermen encroaching in each other’s territorial waters.

“They have their own style of dealing with the Chinese. We also have ours but we agreed that our circumstances are different from them. We’d have to deal with the Chinese depending on our peculiar circumstances. Now we also talked about dealing with fishermen encroaching on each other’s area,” he said in an ambush interview in Clark Airbase last month.

“Because we have apprehended many Vietnamese fishermen here, in fact in 2016 they four vessels in Sual…, we agreed that if they were caught just tell them to go back to their area, let’s not apprehend them. They give us headache,” he added.

Lorenzana said arresting fishermen encroaching on the Philippine waters cause “a lot of troubles”.

“Like for instance, the four ships, fishing boats, when we let them go in Sual in 2016, they even asked for full tank (of gasoline), everyone of them. We also give them food, so it brings a lot of trouble. So if we see them just warn them you are in Philippine waters. Please go back to your area,” he said.

“In like manner, if our fishermen reached their area, just tell them to go back because they do not... have GPS ( global positioning system),” he added. Robina Asido/DMS