{"id":163768,"date":"2018-05-15T03:06:20","date_gmt":"2018-05-15T07:06:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=163768"},"modified":"2018-05-15T03:06:20","modified_gmt":"2018-05-15T07:06:20","slug":"dutertes-ph-rise-trip-symbolic-and-assertive-roque","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/05\/15\/dutertes-ph-rise-trip-symbolic-and-assertive-roque\/","title":{"rendered":"Duterte\u2019s PH Rise trip \u2018symbolic and assertive\u2019: Roque"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The trip of President Rodrigo R. Duterte to the Philippine Rise (formerly Benham Rise) to send off Filipino scientists who will conduct maritime research is both “symbolic” and “assertive”, his spokesperson said Tuesday. (PNA photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA — The trip of President Rodrigo R. Duterte to the Philippine Rise (formerly Benham Rise) to send off Filipino scientists who will conduct maritime research is both “symbolic” and “assertive”, his spokesperson said Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque made this remark as Duterte is set to lead on May 15 the research team\u2019s send-off ceremony which commemorates the 2012 United Nations (UN) declaration that the undersea feature is part of the Philippines\u2019 exclusive economic zone and extended continental shelf.<\/p>\n

The send-off ceremony also falls on a day before the first anniversary of renaming the undersea feature from Benham Rise to Philippine Rise.<\/p>\n

\u201cIto po ay<\/em>\u00a0(This trip is) symbolic at the same time assertive,\u201d Roque said.<\/p>\n

Roque described it as \u201csymbolic\u201d pointing out that the seamount itself could not actually be visited.<\/p>\n

\u201cSymbolic,\u00a0dahil<\/em>\u2014ang<\/em>\u00a0Philippine Rise\u00a0naman po talaga ay iyong lupa at mga bato sa ilalim ng karagatan, hindi kami makakarating doon \u2018no, doon lang kami sa karagatan sa ibabaw ng<\/em>\u00a0continental shelf (Symbolic, because the Philippine Rise is land and stones underneath the sea, we can\u2019t make it there, we\u2019ll only stay above the continental shelf),\u201d Roque said.<\/p>\n

He said that it was \u201cassertive\u201d because it shows the government\u2019s policy to prohibit foreign scientific research and prioritize only Filipino scientists to carry out research in the Philippine Rise.<\/p>\n

\u201cPero ito ay nagpapakita na ang polisiya ng gobyerno ngayon ay talaga pong atin na hindi na muna natin ishe<\/em>-share\u00a0sa ibang dayuhan<\/em>\u00a0(But this also shows the policy of the government which shows that we won\u2019t share research efforts with foreigners),\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

In February, Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Undersecretary Joel Montales confirmed that \u201call research had already been concluded in the area (Philippine Rise).\u201d<\/p>\n

Montales is also chair of the inter-agency technical working group responsible for the grant of licenses to conduct scientific research in the Philippine Rise.<\/p>\n

Roque added that following this development, the President has ordered the revocation of all licenses given to foreign researchers.<\/p>\n

He clarified that this does not mean that foreign researchers were totally banned from conducting research in the Philippine Rise.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not really a ban, I guess it\u2019s just a directive that we want Filipinos to do it as much as possible. That we\u2019re reserving it for Filipinos,\u201d Roque said in an earlier briefing.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe (Duterte) just said because our sovereign rights in Philippine Rise is unquestioned, we do not need to share it with anyone as of now,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA — The trip of President Rodrigo R. Duterte to the Philippine Rise (formerly Benham Rise) to send off Filipino …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":163766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,95],"tags":[5450,13944,31449,24479],"class_list":["post-163768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-ph","tag-benham-rise","tag-president-rodrigo-r-duterte","tag-presidential-spokesperson-harry-roque","tag-united-nations-un","mauthors-azer-parrocha","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}