The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance.
The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away.
“There was a time when they attempted to maneuver closer but, again, we challenged them,” Philippine Navy Commander Irvin Ian Robles told reporters on board the frigate BRP Jose Rizal.
Photo: AP
The latest naval drills, called the Multilateral Maritime Cooperative Activity, were opened for the first time to a small group of Manila-based media since such high-seas maneuvers and joint naval sails began last year.
During the daylong maneuvers, the BRP Jose Rizal; the DDG Shoup, a US Navy guided-missile destroyer; and the JS Noshiro, a Japanese multi-mission frigate, sailed in formation and communicated by radio. US and Philippine helicopters flew around. A small group of US sailors from the DDG Shoup used a speedboat to transfer to the BRP Jose Rizal and hold discussions with Filipino counterparts.
“We are here to support our allies, and support a free and open Indo-Pacific for everyone,” US Navy Lieutenant Alexander Horvath said.
Such naval drills result in “the vital improvements in our coordination, tactics and shared maritime awareness,” Philippine Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Romeo Brawner Jr said in a statement.
“Every iteration strengthens our capacity to respond to maritime security challenges while reinforcing our collective ability to safeguard our national interests,” Brawner said.
China claims virtually the entire South China Sea. A 2016 international arbitration ruling invalidated those claims, but Beijing refused to participate in the arbitration, rejected the outcome and continues to defy it.
Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei have also been involved in the long-seething territorial disputes, but confrontations between Chinese and Philippine coast guard and naval forces have particularly spiked in the past two years.
The US, Japan and the Philippines have been strengthening a security alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against China’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea, a key global trade route.
The trilateral security bloc emerged during the administration of former US president Joe Biden.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
RSS