By Thai Newsroom Reporters
A CHINESE COAST GUARD ship has allegedly intimidated and provoked a Philippine Coast Guard vessel by sailing by in near-collision fashion in the South China Sea.
The Philippine Coast Guard has issued a statement over the weekend to hold the Chinese Coast Guard accountable for a dangerous maritime manoeuvre with one of its naval ships passing the Philippine Coast Guard ship, BRP Teresa Magbanua, in near-collision fashion off Scarborough Shoal about 130 nautical miles west of Luzon Island.
However, no violent incident was reported to follow last Thursday’s maritime provocation and standoff between the naval vessels of the two Asian countries which have laid mutually contradictory claims of territorial integrity over Scarborough Shoal and other submerged reefs in the resource-rich Spratly Islands area.
Philippine Coast Guard vessels which occasionally cater food and supplies to Philippine fishermen aboard trawlers floating around Scarborough Shoal where fishes and aquatic animals are abundant have been allegedly threatened and provoked time and again by the shadowing Chinese Coast Guard ships.
The Chinese Coast Guard ships had earlier forced a group of Philippine fishermen to return giant clams and sea shells which they had caught off the disputed reef and chased them off.
Maritime provocations and standoffs between the Philippines and Chinese navies had emerged over the last few months as China had been advised to no avail to observe the island republic’s exclusive economic zone as part of the South China Sea.
Last December, the Chinese Coast Guard ships fired high-pressure water cannons at Philippine Coast Guard vessels off Scarborough Shoal but no more violence was consequently reported.
The Hague-based arbitral tribunal delivered a ruling in 2016 to categorically deny China’s self-proclaimed territorial integrity over those reefs and atolls in the South China Sea where Chinese military personnel and installations have already been deployed and built.
The Philippines is among several Asian countries invariably viewed by the United States as treaty allies in addition to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.
Japan’s Maritime Self-Defence Force and South Korea’s navy recently joined in a naval exercise with the US Seventh Fleet in the upper skirts of the South China Sea between the Philippines and Taiwan as part of a shared commitment to promoting and maintaining freedom of navigation in the open seas.
Taking part in the remarkable naval exercise were a trio of the US Seventh Fleet’s Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, all being the Carrier Strike Groups flagships, namely USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70), USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) and USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76), as well as cruisers, destroyers and carrier-based Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet fighters, among others.
The sustained tensions in the South China Sea have escalated between China and those US allies, evidently prompting the US Carrier Strike Groups to showcase their naval operational capabilities.
CAPTIONS:
Top: This frame grab from a handout video taken on Thursday, Feb. 8, 2024, and released by the Philippine Coast Guard on February 11 shows a China Coast Guard vessel (front right) blocking and sailing past BRP Teresa Magbanua near Scarborough Shoal. Photo: AFP and published by Manila Times
Front Page: In this image from a video released by the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Filipino sailors look at a Chinese coast guard ship with bow number 5203 as it bumped their supply boat while they approached Second Thomas Shoal, locally called Ayungin Shoal, at the disputed South China Sea, on Oct. 22, 2023. Photo: Armed Forces of the Philippines via AP and published by CTV
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