Manila accused Chinese ships of firing water cannons and making \u201cdangerous maneuvers\u201d toward Philippine vessels resupplying a remote military outpost on Friday, in the latest of a string of incidents between the two countries in the disputed South China Sea. <\/p>\n
Philippine authorities said a Chinese coast guard vessel had fired water cannon against its vessel M\/L Kalayaan in \u201can illegal though unsuccessful attempt to force [it] to alter course,\u201d as it took part in a routine resupply mission to troops stationed on the BRP Sierra Madre in the Second Thomas Shoal. <\/p>\n
The Philippines also claimed that vessels belonging to a Chinese maritime militia were involved in the harassment and that two Philippine boats were subjected to \u201creckless\u201d and \u201cdangerous\u201d harassment by inflatable boats belonging to the Chinese coast guard. <\/p>\n
The BRP Sierra Madre is a former US Navy ship the Philippines grounded in 1999 at the Second Thomas Shoal \u2013 known as Ayungin Shoal to Manila and Ren\u2019ai Reef to Beijing \u2013 to enforce its claim to the area. <\/p>\n
That claim is hotly disputed by China and the two countries have been involved in increasingly frequent run-ins in the highly contested waterway. <\/p>\n
A spokesperson for China\u2019s coast guard, Gan Yu,\u00a0said in a statement that two small transport vessels and three marine police vessels from the Philippines \u201centered the waters adjacent to Ren\u2019ai Reef in China\u2019s Nansha Islands without the permission of the Chinese government.\u201d <\/p>\n
The statement claimed China has \u201cindisputable sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and their adjacent waters, including Ren\u2019ai Reef,\u201d adding the \u201cactions of the Philippine side infringe on China\u2019s territorial sovereignty\u201d and urging Manila to \u201cimmediately stop its infringing actions.\u201d <\/p>\n
The latest incident near Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly Islands comes nearly three weeks after Beijing and Manila blamed each other for two collisions near the same area. <\/p>\n
In its statement following the latest incident, the Philippines said it condemned \u201conce again, China\u2019s latest unprovoked acts of coercion and dangerous maneuvers against a legitimate and routine Philippine rotation and resupply mission.\u201d <\/p>\n
China\u2019s actions\u00a0had not only \u201cput the lives of our people at risk,\u201d but had \u201cput into question and significant doubt the sincerity of its calls for peaceful dialogue,\u201d it added. <\/p>\n
Filipino troops stationed on the BRP Sierra Madre live under spartan conditions on the mostly rusted wreckage of the World War II era ship and rely on the regular delivery of supplies. <\/p>\n
Despite the run-in Friday, the\u00a0Philippine government said the resupply mission was completed. <\/p>\n
Beijing claims \u201cindisputable sovereignty\u201d over almost all of the South China Sea, and most of the islands and sandbars within it, including many features that are hundreds of miles from mainland China, in defiance of an international court ruling in 2016 that sided with the Philippines. <\/p>\n
\u00a0
The Philippine Embassy in Beijing has protested to the Chinese Foreign Ministry over the latest incident. <\/p>\n
The South China Sea is widely seen as a potential flashpoint for global conflict. The recent confrontations between Manila and Beijing have raised concerns among Western observers that the disputes could potentially develop into an international incident if China, a global power, decides to act more forcefully against the Philippines, a US treaty ally. <\/p>\n\n
Manila accused Chinese ships of firing water cannons and making \u201cdangerous maneuvers\u201d toward Philippine vessels resupplying a remote military outpost on Friday, in the latest of a string of incidents between the two countries in the disputed South China Sea. Philippine authorities said a Chinese coast guard vessel had fired water cannon against its vessel <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11440,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11439","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}