Filipino activists and fishermen sail in 100-boat flotilla to disputed shoal guarded by China

Filipino activists and fishermen sail in 100-boat flotilla to disputed shoal guarded by China
Fishing boats carrying activists and volunteers pass by waters off Palauig Point, Zambales province, northwestern Philippines as they head toward Scarborough Shoal May 15, 2024. (Philippine Coast Guard via AP)
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Updated 15 May 2024
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Filipino activists and fishermen sail in 100-boat flotilla to disputed shoal guarded by China

Filipino activists and fishermen sail in 100-boat flotilla to disputed shoal guarded by China
  • Philippine coast guard and navy deploy one patrol ship each to keep watch from a distance on the activists and fishermen
  • China effectively seized the Scarborough Shoal, a triangle-shaped atoll with a vast fishing lagoon, in 2012

MANILA: A flotilla of about 100 mostly small fishing boats led by Filipino activists sailed Wednesday to a disputed shoal in the South China Sea, where Beijing’s coast guard and suspected militia ships have used powerful water cannons to ward off what they regard as intruders.
The Philippine coast guard and navy deployed one patrol ship each to keep watch from a distance on the activists and fishermen, who set off on wooden boats with bamboo outriggers to assert Manila’s sovereignty over the Scarborough Shoal. Dozens of journalists joined the three-day voyage.
Activists and volunteers, including a Roman Catholic priest, belonging to a nongovernment coalition called Atin Ito — Tagalog for This is Ours — planned to float small territorial buoys and distribute food packs and fuel to Filipino fishermen near the shoal, organizers said, adding they were prepared for contingencies.
“Our mission is peaceful based on international law and aimed at asserting our sovereign rights,” said Rafaela David, a lead organizer. “We will sail with determination, not provocation, to civilianize the region and safeguard our territorial integrity.”
In December, David’s group with boatloads of fishermen also tried to sail to another disputed shoal but cut short the trip after being tailed by a Chinese ship.
China effectively seized the Scarborough Shoal, a triangle-shaped atoll with a vast fishing lagoon ringed by mostly submerged coral outcrops, by surrounding it with its coast guard ships after a tense 2012 standoff with Philippine government ships.
Angered by China’s action, the Philippine government brought the disputes to international arbitration in 2013 and largely won with a tribunal in The Hague ruling three years later that China’s expansive claims based on historical grounds in the busy seaway were invalid under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The ruling declared the Scarborough Shoal a traditional fishing area for Chinese, Filipino and Vietnamese fishermen. In the past, fishermen have anchored in the shoal to avoid huge waves in the high seas in stormy weather.
China refused to participate in the arbitration, rejected the outcome and continues to defy it.
Two weeks ago, Chinese coast guard and suspected militia ships used water cannons on Philippine coast guard and fisheries boats patrolling the Scarborough Shoal, damaging both craft.
The Philippines condemned the Chinese coast guard’s action on the shoal, which lies in the Southeast Asian nation’s internationally recognized exclusive economic zone. The Chinese coast guard said it took a “necessary measure” after the Philippine ships “violated China’s sovereignty.”
The Chinese coast guard has also reinstalled a floating barrier across the entrance to the shoal’s vast fishing lagoon, the Philippine coast guard said. The Philippine coast guard removed a similar barrier in the past to allow Filipinos to fish there.
In addition to the Philippines and China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have also been involved in the territorial disputes.
Chinese coast guard ships had also ventured into waters close to Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia in the past, sparking tensions and protests, but the Southeast Asian nations with considerable economic ties with China have not been as aggressively critical against Beijing’s increasingly assertive actions.
The Philippines has released videos of its territorial faceoffs with China and invited journalists to witness the hostilities in the high seas in a strategy to gain international support, sparking a word war with Beijing.
The increasing frequency of the skirmishes between the Philippines and China has led to minor collisions, injured Filipino navy personnel and damaged supply boats in recent months. It has sparked fears the territorial disputes could degenerate into an armed conflict between China and the United States, a longtime treaty ally of the Philippines.


UN talks struggle for breakthrough on plastics treaty as deadline looms

UN talks struggle for breakthrough on plastics treaty as deadline looms
Updated 9 sec ago
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UN talks struggle for breakthrough on plastics treaty as deadline looms

UN talks struggle for breakthrough on plastics treaty as deadline looms
  • South Korea is hosting delegates from about 175 countries at the fifth and final meeting of the UN Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee
  • Nations which produce petrochemicals, such as Saudi Arabia, oppose efforts to cap plastic production

BUSAN, South Korea: The chairman of talks aiming for an international treaty to rein in pollution from plastics issued a document on Friday outlining measures that could furnish the basis of a pact, in an attempt to spur discussions as a Dec. 1 deadline approaches.
South Korea is hosting delegates from about 175 countries at the fifth and final meeting of the UN Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) to agree globally binding rules on plastics, but this week's talks had moved at glacial pace.
The document, issued by committee chair Luis Vayas Valdivieso and viewed by Reuters, featured ideas such as a global list of plastic products to be managed and a financial mechanism to help fund developing countries act on the treaty.
"The high and rapidly increasing levels of plastic pollution ... represent a serious environmental and human health problem," the document said.
It mentioned, but did not confirm, some of the most divisive tasks, such as whether the treaty will set a global target to cut output of primary plastic polymers or skip it altogether, and left undecided how rich nations would contribute to a fund.
"A global target to reduce plastic production is in (the document)," said Graham Forbes, who led the Greenpeace delegation to the talks.
"Keeping this in the final treaty text must be a redline for any country serious about ending plastic pollution."
The International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA) representing makers of plastic, backs governments' efforts to finalise the deal, said its spokesperson, Stewart Harris, adding that the body wanted to hasten a circular economy for plastics.
Nations which produce petrochemicals, such as Saudi Arabia, oppose efforts to cap plastic production, despite the protests of low- and middle-income nations that bear the brunt of plastic pollution.
While supporting an international treaty, the petrochemical industry has also been vocal in urging governments to avoid setting mandatory plastic production caps in favour of efforts to reduce plastic waste, such as recycling.
The chairman's move came after several participants had expressed frustration at the slow pace of the talks, amid disagreements over procedure, multiple proposals and some efforts to return to ground covered in the past.


International court to begin hearings that may shape global climate litigation

International court to begin hearings that may shape global climate litigation
Updated 14 min 35 sec ago
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International court to begin hearings that may shape global climate litigation

International court to begin hearings that may shape global climate litigation
  • Court to give opinion on legal obligations around climate
  • ICJ opinion is non-binding but likely to influence litigation
THE HAGUE: The United Nations’ top court next week begins hearings on the legal obligation of countries to fight climate change and the consequences for states of contributing to global warming, the outcome of which could influence litigation worldwide.
While the advisory opinions of the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) are non-binding, they are legally and politically significant. Experts say the ICJ’s eventual opinion on climate change will likely be cited in climate change-driven lawsuits in courts from Europe to Latin America and beyond.
The hearings begin a week after developing nations denounced as woefully inadequate an agreement reached at the COP29 summit for countries to provide $300 billion in annual climate finance by 2035 to help poorer nations cope with climate change.
Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s special envoy for climate change and the environment, said it was imperative fossil fuels be phased out and more money provided to poorer nations bearing the brunt of climate change, such as his Pacific island nation.
“We’re not seeing that in the outcome of the COPs,” Regenvanu told Reuters.
“We are hoping (the ICJ) can provide a new avenue to break through the inertia we experience when trying to talk about climate justice,” he added.
Fiji’s Attorney General Graham Leung called the hearings a historic opportunity for small island developing states in their quest for climate change justice.
CLIMATE LITIGATION
Climate litigation is on the rise.
Earlier this year, Europe’s top human rights court ruled that the Swiss government had violated the rights of its citizens by failing to do enough to combat climate change. But it also rejected two other cases, pointing to the complexities of the growing wave of climate litigation.
Vanuatu, one of the small developing nations that pushed for an ICJ advisory opinion, says it disproportionately suffers the effects of climate change as a result of increasingly intense storms and rising sea levels.
Vanuatu will be the first of 98 countries and twelve international organizations to present arguments to the ICJ, also known as the World Court. It is the United Nations’ highest court for resolving international disputes between states and can be tasked by the UN General Assembly to give advisory opinions.
In 2023, the assembly asked it for a formal opinion on questions including the legal obligations of states to protect the climate system and whether large states that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions may be liable for damages, in particular to small island nations.
“As COP29 failed to provide a clear direction for climate justice and ambition, any developments from the ICJ will now only become more weighty,” said Lea Main-Klingst, a lawyer with ClientEarth.
Aside from small island states and numerous Western and developing countries, the court will also hear from the world’s top two emitters of greenhouse gases, the United States and China. Oil producer group OPEC will also give its views.
The hearings will start at 10 a.m. (0900 GMT) local time on Monday and run until Dec. 13. The court’s opinion will be delivered in 2025.

Top UN court to open unprecedented climate hearings next week

Top UN court to open unprecedented climate hearings next week
Updated 55 min 10 sec ago
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Top UN court to open unprecedented climate hearings next week

Top UN court to open unprecedented climate hearings next week
  • Representatives from more than 100 countries, organizations will make submissions before the International Court of Justice
  • Activists hope the legal opinion from the ICJ judges will have far-reaching consequences in the fight against climate change

THE HAGUE: The world’s top court will next week start unprecedented hearings aimed at finding a “legal blueprint” for how countries should protect the environment from damaging greenhouse gases — and what the consequences are if they do not.
From Monday, lawyers and representatives from more than 100 countries and organizations will make submissions before the International Court of Justice in The Hague — the highest number ever.
Activists hope the legal opinion from the ICJ judges will have far-reaching consequences in the fight against climate change.
But others fear the UN-backed request for a non-binding advisory opinion will have limited impact — and it could take the UN’s top court months, or even years, to deliver.
The hearings at the Peace Palace come days after a bitterly negotiated climate deal at the COP29 summit in Azerbaijan, which said developed countries must provide at least $300 billion a year by 2035 for climate finance.
Poorer countries have slammed the pledge from wealthy polluters as insultingly low and the final deal failed to mention a global pledge to move away from planet-heating fossil fuels.
The UN General Assembly last year adopted a resolution in which it referred two key questions to the ICJ judges.
First, what obligations did states have under international law to protect the Earth’s climate system from greenhouse gas emissions?
Second, what are the legal consequences under these obligations, where states, “by their acts and omissions, have caused significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment?“
The second question was also linked to the legal responsibilities of states for harm caused to small, more vulnerable countries and their populations.
This applied especially to countries under threat from rising sea levels and harsher weather patterns in places like the Pacific Ocean.
“Climate change for us is not a distant threat,” said Vishal Prasad, director of the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) group.
“It is reshaping our lives right now. Our islands are at risk. Our communities face disruptive change at a rate and scale that generations before us have not known,” Prasad told journalists a few days before the start of the hearings.
Launching a campaign in 2019 to bring the climate issue to the ICJ, Prasad’s group of 27 students spearheaded consensus among Pacific island nations including his own native Fiji, before it was taken to the UN.
Last year, the General Assembly unanimously adopted the resolution to ask the ICJ for an advisory opinion.
Joie Chowdhury, a senior lawyer at the US and Swiss-based Center for International Environmental Law, said climate advocates did not expect the ICJ’s opinion “to provide very specific answers.”
Instead, she predicted the court would provide “a legal blueprint in a way, on which more specific questions can be decided,” she said.
The judges’ opinion, which she expected sometime next year, “will inform climate litigation on domestic, national and international levels.”
“One of the questions that is really important, as all of the legal questions hinge on it, is what is the conduct that is unlawful,” said Chowdhury.
“That is very central to these proceedings,” she said.
Some of the world’s largest carbon polluters — including the world’s top three greenhouse gas emitters, China, the United States and India — will be among some 98 countries and 12 organizations and groups expected to make submissions.
On Monday, proceedings will open with a statement from Vanuatu and the Melanesian Spearhead Group which also represents the vulnerable island states of Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands as well as Indonesia and East Timor.
At the end of the two-week hearings, organizations including the EU and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries are to give their statements.
“With this advisory opinion, we are not only here to talk about what we fear losing,” the PISFCC’s Prasad said.
“We’re here to talk about what we can protect and what we can build if we stand together,” he said.


Indonesian rescuers search for missing in buried cars and bus after landslide in Sumatra

Indonesian rescuers search for missing in buried cars and bus after landslide in Sumatra
Updated 29 November 2024
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Indonesian rescuers search for missing in buried cars and bus after landslide in Sumatra

Indonesian rescuers search for missing in buried cars and bus after landslide in Sumatra
  • The death toll from one landslide on Wednesday on a hilly interprovince road rose to nine from seven
  • Flash floods hit the provincial city of Medan on Friday although waters have receded in some areas

JAKARTA: Indonesian rescuers on Friday searched for survivors buried in three cars and bus at the base of a cliff after flash floods and landslides in North Sumatra province killed at least 29 people.
Torrential rain for the past week in the province has triggered flash floods and landslides in four different districts, Indonesia’s disaster agency has said.
The death toll from one landslide on Wednesday on a hilly interprovince road rose to nine from seven, Hadi Wahyudi, the spokesperson of North Sumatra police told Reuters on Friday.
At least five cars, one bus, and one truck were trapped at the base of a cliff following the landslide. On Friday, police and rescuers focused their search for missing people on three cars and one bus buried in mud.
“We still don’t know how many people who were still trapped,” Hadi said.
In other districts, landslides over the weekend killed 20 people and rescuers will keep searching for two missing people until Saturday.
Flash floods hit the provincial city of Medan on Friday although waters have receded in some areas, said Sariman Sitorus, spokesperson for the local search agency.
The floods forced a delay in votes for regional elections in some areas in Medan on Wednesday.
Extreme weather is expected in Indonesia toward the end of 2024, as the La Nina phenomenon increases rainfalls across the tropical archipelago, the country’s weather agency has warned.


UK transport secretary quits over decade-old cellphone fraud case

UK transport secretary quits over decade-old cellphone fraud case
Updated 29 November 2024
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UK transport secretary quits over decade-old cellphone fraud case

UK transport secretary quits over decade-old cellphone fraud case
  • The resignation came hours after Sky News and The Times of London newspaper reported that Haigh had been charged with fraud
  • After she found the phone and switched it back on, she was called in for questioning by police

LONDON: British Transport Minister Louise Haigh resigned on Friday over a decade-old fraud conviction for claiming her cellphone had been stolen.
In a letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Haigh said “I remain totally committed to our political project, but I now believe it will be best served by my supporting you from outside government.”
“I appreciate that whatever the facts of the matter, this issue will inevitably be a distraction from delivering on the work of this government and the policies to which we are both committed,” she wrote.
The resignation came hours after Sky News and The Times of London newspaper reported that Haigh had been charged with fraud after she reported that a work cellphone had been stolen after she was mugged in 2013. She later said she had mistakenly listed it among the stolen items.
After she found the phone and switched it back on, she was called in for questioning by police. Haigh pleaded guilty to fraud by misrepresentation and was given a conditional discharge.
In a statement before her resignation, Haigh said that “under the advice of my solicitor I pleaded guilty -– despite the fact this was a genuine mistake from which I did not make any gain. The magistrates accepted all of these arguments and gave me the lowest possible outcome (a discharge) available.”
Haigh, 37, has represented a district in Sheffield, northern England, in Parliament since 2015 and was named to the key transport post after Starmer’s center-left Labour party was elected in July.