President Ferdinand Marcos on Thursday said that the Philippines will not be “cowed into silence” by Beijing after confrontations in the South China Sea that injured Filipino troops and damaged vessels.
“We seek no conflict with any nation, more so nations that purport and claim to be our friends but we will not be cowed into silence, submission, or subservience,” Marcos said in a statement posted on his X handle.
Over the course of these past days, I have met with and spoken to our country’s National Security and Defense leadership. They have made their considered recommendations and, through exhaustive consultations, I have given them my directives.I have also been in constant…
— Bongbong Marcos (@bongbongmarcos) March 28, 2024
He said the Philippines would respond with a “countermeasure package that is proportionate, deliberate, and reasonable in the face of the open, unabating, and illegal, coercive, aggressive, and dangerous attacks by agents of the China Coast Guard and the Chinese Maritime Militia”. “Filipinos do not yield,” Marcos said.
Marcos’s remarks followed the latest clashes in the disputed waterway, during which the China Coast Guard fired water cannon at a Philippine vessel carrying supplies for troops garrisoned on a remote reef. Beijing and Manila have a long history of maritime territorial disputes in the strategic waterway and there have been repeated confrontations between their vessels near contested reefs in recent months.
‘Chinese water cannon’
China Coast Guard hits a Philippine Supply Vessel with a water cannon, blocks it as it approaches Ayungin Shoal. Chinese action causes near collision. pic.twitter.com/DCYfJ8vrHN— Sidhant Sibal (@sidhant) March 24, 2024
The incident last Saturday left three Filipino navy personnel injured and caused severe damage to their supply vessel, Manila said previously. China claims almost the entire South China Sea, brushing off rival claims from other countries, including the Philippines, and an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis.
On Thursday, China blamed Philippine actions for recent rising tension between the two sides in the hotly contested waters. “The provocations by the Philippine side are the direct cause of the recent heating up of the South China Sea issue,” Beijing’s defence ministry said in a statement entitled “China Will Not Allow the Philippines to Act Wilfully”. “Relying on the backing of external forces… the Philippine side has frequently infringed on rights and provoked and created trouble at sea, as well as spreading false information to mislead the international community’s perception of the issue, which is, so to speak, going further and further down a dangerous road,” it added.
(With agency inputs)
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