President says nation will reply to South China Sea confrontations with proportionate measures after Filipino troopers injured.
President Ferdinand Marcos says the Philippines will take countermeasures in opposition to China after confrontations within the South China Sea final week injured Filipino troopers and broken vessels.
“We search no battle with any nation, extra so nations that purport and declare to be our pals however we is not going to be cowed into silence, submission, or subservience,” Marcos mentioned in a press release on Thursday.
He mentioned the Philippines would reply with a “countermeasure bundle that’s proportionate, deliberate, and cheap within the face of the open, unabating, and unlawful, coercive, aggressive, and harmful assaults by brokers of the China Coast Guard and the Chinese language Maritime Militia”.
He added: “Filipinos don’t yield.”
Marcos’s remarks got here as China blamed Philippine actions for latest rising tensions between the nations within the hotly contested waterway, which Beijing claims virtually solely.
The 2 nations have a protracted historical past of maritime territorial disputes within the South China Sea, and there have been repeated confrontations between their vessels close to disputed reefs in latest months.
Chinese language envoy summoned
The newest incident close to Second Thomas Shoal within the Spratly Islands occurred on Saturday throughout an everyday Philippine mission to resupply Filipino troops garrisoned on the BRP Sierra Madre, a grounded navy ship.
The Philippines mentioned the Chinese language coastguard blocked its provide vessel and broken it with water cannon, injuring three troopers. It summoned a Chinese language envoy in response.
China’s coastguard has defended its actions, describing them as “lawful regulation, interception and expulsion” of a international vessel that “tried to forcefully intrude” into Chinese language waters.
China has urged Manila to “pull again from the brink” and cease “scary hassle at sea”.
In a press release on Thursday titled China Will Not Permit the Philippines to Act Wilfully, Beijing’s Ministry of Nationwide Defence blamed “the provocations by the Philippine facet” for the elevated tensions over the South China Sea.
“Counting on the backing of exterior forces … the Philippine facet has continuously infringed on rights and provoked and created hassle at sea, in addition to spreading false info to mislead the worldwide neighborhood’s notion of the difficulty, which is, so to talk, going additional and additional down a harmful street,” the assertion added.
US assist
The USA, a treaty ally of the Philippines, has led a refrain of assist for the Southeast Asian nation in response to Chinese language actions.
Marcos mentioned the worldwide neighborhood had “supplied to assist us on what the Philippines requires to guard and safe our sovereignty, sovereign rights, and jurisdiction whereas making certain peace and stability within the Indo-Pacific”.
“I’ve given them our necessities and now we have been assured that they are going to be addressed,” he mentioned with out offering particulars.
His assertion additionally got here after US Protection Secretary Lloyd Austin repeated the “ironclad” US dedication to its longtime ally in a name together with his Filipino counterpart, Gilberto Teodoro, on Wednesday.
