In separate remarks before typhoon victims in Cagayan and Isabela, Duterte said he couldn’t let Chinese fishermen prowl at Panatag Shoal, citing the July 12 ruling of a United Nations-backed arbitration tribunal that the area lies within the Philippines’ 200-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The ruling rejected China’s “nine-dash line,” with which Beijing claims ownership all of almost the entire South China Sea, and upheld that Philippines’ sovereign rights over its EEZ as provided under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. “Just wait for a few more days and we can return to [fishing in]Scarborough. China said it is theirs, and I also said that Scarborough is ours. There is a lagoon there … in green … which is the fishing ground. I told those [Chinese] myself, don’t go fishing there,” Duterte said.

Panti, L. T. ( 2016, October 24). Duterte tells China: stop fishing in shoal. The Manila Times, pp. A1, A2.