A YouTube channel falsely claimed that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. expelled Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Huang Xilian following the Aug. 5 water cannon incident in the West Philippine Sea.
A video uploaded by YouTube channel Boss Balita TV on Aug. 8 carried this erroneous line:
“TUGON SA BOMB4 NG CHINA! GRABE PRES BBM! LALABAN NA TAYO! PINALAYAS SI HUANG! NAGALIT NA BUO MUNDO (Answer to China’s bombing! President BBM! We’ll now fight! Huang kicked out! The entire world got mad)!”
There was no such expulsion order. The Department of Foreign Affairs on Aug. 7 summoned the Chinese ambassador and filed a diplomatic protest against the Chinese Coast Guard’s (CCG) use of water cannons to stop Philippine vessels on a resupply mission to the Ayungin Shoal.
The narrator in the 10-minute video also misquoted Marcos:
“Ayon kay BBM, tayo ang may-ari sa West Philippine Sea. Walang karapatan dito ang China, kaya wala sila sa lugar para tayo’ng bombahin kaya binalaan niya si Huang Xilian na kung di titigil ang China talagang makakatikim na sila sa atin.”
(According to BBM, we own the West Philippine Sea. China has no right here, so they’re not in the position to fire [water cannons] so he warned Huang Xilian that if China won’t stop, they will really receive pushback from us.)
It was not what Marcos said when asked about the Aug. 5 attack by the CCG vessels against the Filipino resupply mission. This is what he said during an Aug. 7 press conference:
“We continue to assert our territorial rights in the face of all of these challenges and consistent with the international law and UNCLOS especially… But we still have to keep communicating with the Chinese government, with President Xi, with Beijing.”
There are protocols and procedures on kicking out diplomats.There was neither a notification to China nor a rendering of the Chinese ambassador as persona non grata for him to be recalled or terminated from his duties.
The erroneous video by Boss Balita TV (created on July 15, 2021) got a total of 15,044 interactions.
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