MANILA, Philippines — Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) spokesperson for the West Philippine Sea Rear Adm. Jay Tarriela on Friday rejected Sen. Robin Padilla’s claim that the government’s transparency campaign in the West Philippine Sea amounted to “wartime propaganda,” saying the initiative merely documents Chinese aggression and harassment against Filipinos.
Tarriela was responding to a Facebook post by Padilla, who criticized the rear admiral’s caricature of Chinese President Xi Jinping and accused him of escalating “wartime propaganda.”
The exchange followed the release of an AI-generated video by Chinese state media outlet China Daily depicting Filipinos as monkeys and mocking the 2016 arbitral award. In response, Tarriela urged senators who had criticized his caricature of the People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping to instead demand an apology from Beijing.
READ: Padilla: China Daily’s ‘racist’ video unacceptable
“Senator Robin Padilla, with all due respect, our transparency initiative is not wartime propaganda,” Tarriela said in a Facebook post. “It is simply a means to expose Chinese aggression and harassment—particularly against our Filipino fishermen and our PCG and BFAR vessels. We do not create the incidents; we only document them.”
Tarriela also took issue with Padilla’s remarks on the Chinese video.
“Secondly, I believe it is an insult to the more than 26 million Filipinos who voted for you that you accepted that we are monkeys,” Tarriela said in a mix of Filipino and English.
“This is not from the perspective of white supremacists, but from the perspective of the Chinese government itself—they were the ones who created and circulated that video,” he said.
Tarriela said he would never accept portraying Filipinos as monkeys.
“As a Filipino, I will never accept that my race is likened to monkeys—nor will I accept that future generations of our country be labeled as such. True respect for our race means defending it—not accepting insults. Filipinos are not monkeys!” he said.
Earlier Friday, Padilla wrote that Tarriela “drew first blood” and accused the PCG official of escalating “wartime propaganda.”
“This escalation into wartime propaganda was your genius creation,” Padilla wrote on Facebook.
Referring to the Chinese state media video, Padilla added: “As for the Chinese media, aren’t we all monkeys of different colors in the eyes of white colonizers/supremacists? Filipinos are brown, and Chinese and Japanese are yellow. We cannot deny our relativity to each other.”
The AI-generated video mocking Filipinos prompted widespread condemnation from Philippine officials and lawmakers.
The Department of Foreign Affairs lodged a diplomatic protest over the video, calling it a racist disinformation campaign that was “deeply offensive” to the Filipino people.
National Security Adviser Eduardo Oban Jr. and Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. also denounced the video, while several lawmakers called on China to issue an apology. /mr
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