OVER the weekend the Armed Forces of the Philippines announced that the China Coast Guard had fired water cannons at a supply boat of the Philippine Navy and a vessel of the Philippine Coast Guard.
The boat was on a troop rotation and resupply mission to Ayungin shoal, which is a low-tide elevation a little less than 200 kilometers off the coast of Palawan.
Ayungin, also called the Second Thomas shoal, is a feature of the Spratly islands. It is located within the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines.
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The BRP Sierra Madre is an 80-year-old tank-landing ship constructed for the US Navy when the second World War was tapering off.
It later saw action in the Vietnam War, after which it was relinquished to the Philippines which gave it its current name.
No longer viable for maintenance, the ship ran aground Ayungin in 1999 during the incumbency of President Joseph Estrada.
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Whether deliberate or not, the grounded BRP Sierra Madre has since served as an outpost to monitor the creation of man-made islands as well as the installation of Chinese military facilities in the area.
China has repeatedly demanded that the Philippines remove BRP Sierra Madre from its moorings. It claims that Ayungin is part of Nansha Qundao, or Spratly Islands, that is supposedly encompassed by the famed nine-dash line.
The nine-dash-line was invalidated in July 2016 by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague.
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The Sierra Madre is manned by a dozen Philippine marines.
These brave soldiers are in constant need of resupply and replacement. Navy boats perform these chores under repeated threats from the Chinese coast guard.
Ian Storey of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute of Singapore was quoted in news reports as saying that “the Sierra Madre is falling apart and the armed forces want to fortify the ship. It’s very much in China’s interest to see that the vessel collapse so the marines would have to withdraw and China could move in.”
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Storey pointed out another option for China. It is to “blockade the shoal and starve the marines into surrender.”
These observations are consistent with China’s recent actions, prompting the United States and its allies to condemn the blocking movements as an interference into the Philippines’ exercise of high seas freedom of navigation. They have “jeopardized the safety of the Philippine vessels and crew.”
The Japanese ambassador called them harassment actions that endanger navigational safety and therefore totally unacceptable.
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Former President Rodrigo Duterte, who recently visited Beijing without clearance from the current president, had previously adopted a policy of appeasement towards China.
In his time 22 fishermen from Mindoro were set adrift after a Chinese boat rammed their boat and sailed off without any attempt for their search and rescue. They survived only because they were rescued by a passing Vietnamese boat.
China is disregarding all obstacles to its uncontested possession of everything within the fictional nine-dash-line. Duterte’s pivot to rapprochement has apparently only served to further embolden these efforts.
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President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. has evidently abandoned his predecessor’s tepid response to China’s incursions.
Yesterday the Department of Foreign Affairs announced that it has filed a diplomatic protest over the incident and has summoned the Chinese ambassador. The DFA also proclaimed adherence to the 2016 arbitral ruling that upheld Philippine sovereign rights over the disputed shoal.
This bold direction has inspired international support./PN
