Cavite airport builder to be tagged in case against China’s Xi

MANILA – A Chinese firm that is set to build an airport in Cavite province will be included in the case against Chinese President Xi Jinping before the International Criminal Court, one of its petitioners said on Thursday.

The case accuses Xi and other Chinese leaders of “crimes against humanity” in the Western Philippine Sea, where Beijing has stepped up militarization and island building activities.

“In our, which is equivalent to a motion for reconsideration, we are implementing the executives of the Chinese construction company for having been fundamental in the construction of artificial islands,” said former Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales.

Morales said he was referring to the CCCC or China Communications Construction Co Ltd.

This month, President Rodrigo Duterte gave the signal for the Sangley Airport project, which state-owned CCCC and Lucio Tan’s MacroAsia pocketed in 2019.

CCCC is one of 24 companies that the United States recently blacklisted for its alleged involvement in Beijing’s militarization projects in the disputed South China Sea.

In December, the ICC dismissed the communication from Morales and former Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario against Beijing. The court said China is not a state party to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC.

Morales said his group, which recently had the help of retired Supreme Court Justice Antonio, would file its motion for reconsideration this month.

“We insist that the crimes committed by Xi Jinping and others were committed within Philippine territory and also within the Exclusive Economic Zone,” he said of the appeal.

Morales said his group remained “very confident” that the case would go through.

“Before presenting the communication, we spent days and weeks to reflect on our possibilities … Regardless of whether there are precedents, we are very confident that we will win this case,” he said.

Beijing has rejected a 2016 ruling by a United Nations-backed court that dismissed its broad claims over almost the entire South China Sea.

President Rodrigo Duterte has largely shelved the decision in favor of Beijing loans and investments. But in his first speech to the UN on Tuesday, he said the Philippines “strongly rejects” any attempt to undermine the award.

“That is an optimistic development. Finally, he was in charge of saying that the arbitral tribunal must be maintained, it cannot be the subject of any compromise or different interpretation of the different parties, ”Morales said.

“The president got off to a good start. What he should probably do now is publicly request or get in touch with other countries to support us in our pursuit of the implementation of the arbitration ruling, “he added.

The United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Australia recently rejected China’s “historic claims” on nearly 90 percent of the waterway through which international trade worth trillions of dollars passes each year.

– With a report by Jamaine Punzalan, ABS-CBN News