[ad_1]
MANILA: The Philippines on Sunday (March 21) accused China of “incursion” after more than 200 militia ships were spotted near a disputed reef in the South China Sea, in a rare rebuke to its superpower. neighbor.
The Philippine coast guard detected the boats “in line formation” on the boomerang-shaped Whitsun Reef, about 200 miles west of the island of Palawan on March 7.
“We call on the Chinese to stop this incursion and immediately remember these ships that violate our maritime rights and invade our sovereign territory,” Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said in a statement.
“This is a clear provocative action to militarize the area. These are territories within the Exclusive Economic Zone of the Philippines.”
READ: South China Sea: Philippines protests China’s new law as ‘verbal threat of war’
Lorenzana said the government was considering “appropriate actions” to protect Filipino fishermen, the country’s marine resources and maintain peace and stability in the area.
Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin said on Twitter that he had filed a diplomatic protest over the ships.
The Chinese embassy in Manila did not respond to a request for comment.
A government task force tasked with monitoring the disputed waters announced Saturday the detection of some 220 “Chinese maritime militia ships” earlier this month.
“Despite the clear weather at the time, the Chinese vessels concentrated on the reef showed no real fishing activities,” the agency said.
The United States has previously accused China of using the maritime militia to “intimidate, coerce and threaten other nations” over its claims over most of the South China Sea.
The resource-rich waterway is also contested by several countries, including the Philippines.
China ignored a 2016 international court decision that declared its claim unfounded.
Relations between the Philippines and China have improved with President Rodrigo Duterte, who has tried to move his country away from the United States, his former colonial master, to seek greater economic cooperation with his giant neighbor and American rival.
READ: Unified ASEAN Can Avoid South China Sea Conflict: Philippine Minister
But Duterte’s change has failed to contain Chinese ambitions at sea or unlock much of the billions of dollars of trade and loans promised.
He has repeatedly said that the conflict with China would be futile and the Philippines would lose and suffer greatly in the process.
Lorenzana, however, has been more outspoken.
In August, he accused China of illegally occupying Philippine maritime territory and said that the nine-line line used by Beijing to justify its alleged historical rights to the key waterway was a fabrication.
His comments at the time came amid a new dispute over the disputed Scarborough bank, which China seized from the Philippines in 2012 after a tense standoff.
In 2019, the Philippines also complained after hundreds of Chinese ships were spotted near Pag-asa Island, also known as Thitu, which the country called “illegal.”
