MANILA – Personnel of the China Coast Guard (CCG) has reportedly seized and dumped the food supplies intended for Filipino soldiers stationed at the BRP Sierra Madre in Ayungin Shoal.
According to Armed Forces chief General Romeo Brawner Jr., the CCG might have thrown the supplies after failing to find construction materials they suspected were being sent to the BRP Sierra Madre.
“Siguro naghahanap sila ng construction materials. Some of the food supplies were recovered, but most sunk. Sayang,” Brawner said in a press conference on Tuesday.
Prior to this incident, China reportedly seized relief supplies air dropped to a Philippine Navy outpost in the Ayungin Shoal.
The BRP Sierra Madre, a rusting World War 2 ship deliberately grounded by the Philippines on the contested shoal in 1999 to assert its stake in the area, has become a major flashpoint in the West Philippine Sea conflict.
Confrontations between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea have grown more tense and frequent during the past year, including China’s Coast Guard using water cannons and accusations by Manila that it had rammed Philippine vessels.
China claims almost the entire South China Sea, a conduit for more than $3 trillion in annual ship commerce. Its territorial claims overlap with those of the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei.
Scarborough Shoal, also known as Bajo de Masinloc, is located 124 nautical miles west of Zambales and within the country’s 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone.
In 2016, an international arbitration tribunal in The Hague ruled that China’s claims over the South China Sea have no legal basis, a decision that Beijing does not recognize./PN
