The Philippines yesterday said that it has filed a formal protest with China over a “floating structure” spotted near the disputed Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島), the site of repeated clashes in the South China Sea.
Scarborough Shoal lies 240km west of the Philippines’ main island of Luzon and nearly 900km from Hainan, the nearest major Chinese land mass. Taiwan also lays claim to it.
China claims almost the entirety of the South China Sea despite a 2016 court ruling that said its claims had no basis in international law.
Photo: AFP
Beijing revealed plans in September last year to create a “nature reserve” at Scarborough, prompting Manila’s former national security adviser Eduardo Ano to call it a “clear pretext toward eventual occupation.”
Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Analyn Ratonel yesterday confirmed that Manila had issued a protest over the new structure, said to be at the entrance of a lagoon once used by Filipino fishers.
Manila “has undertaken the appropriate diplomatic action, such as several demarches and the issuance of a formal protest, against the structure,” Ratonel told reporters in a messaging app group chat.
The message came a day after Armed Forces of the Philippines Chief of Staff Romeo Brawner told a government television station that the Philippine Air Force planes had spotted a structure with six people atop it and what appeared to be an antenna.
“We will not allow a repeat of what happened in the past when they initially put up a small structure and then later on it grew into an artificial island,” he said in an apparent reference to reefs in the area that China has turned into militarized islands.
“We will not allow that at Scarborough Shoal,” he said, pledging increased air and sea patrols to monitor developments in the area.
In a statement, the Chinese embassy in Manila repeated Beijing’s “indisputable” claim to Scarborough as part of its “inherent territory.”
“It is fully within China’s sovereign rights to carry out activities including scientific research” at Scarborough, embassy spokesman Ji Lingpeng (季凌鵬) said.
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