By Joyce Ann L. Rocamora | Philippine News Agency
A local lawyer, hired to represent the three Filipinos detained in China over alleged espionage, is awaiting approval to visit, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said Tuesday.
DFA Usec. Eduardo Jose de Vega said the Philippine government will not comment further on the case but assured the suspects’ families that the government is providing all the necessary legal assistance to the three, including funding for the legal counsel.
“There’s a local lawyer taking on their case funded by the DFA Legal Assistance Fund and we’re strongly requesting the Chinese authorities at least to allow (the lawyer) to see them in their detention in Hainan,” he said in an interview.
De Vega recognized that the Chinese justice system is strict and that the approval of the provincial governor of Hainan is needed.
“So we’re working on that. For more details, we can get it from what the Office of the President and what the NSC (National Security Council) has said—we deny that there was espionage,” he said.
The three arrested Filipinos are former recipients of the Hainan Government Scholarship Program established under the sisterhood agreement between the provinces of Hainan and Palawan, which provided scholarships to 50 scholars from Palawan at the Hainan National University.
At that time, the NSC said they went to China only to study at the invitation of the Chinese government.
NSC Asst. Dir. Gen. Jonathan Malaya previously said the three are ordinary Filipino citizens with no military training.
