South China Sea: Filipino fisherman tells Chinese ship ‘go away’ from disputed shoal, `this is not your territory’

At a January 17 meeting in Shanghai, Beijing and Manila agreed to take steps to ease tensions after a year of high-seas territorial face-offs between their ships in the sea passage, one of the world’s busiest.

The hostilities have sparked fears of a major armed conflict that could involve Washington, Manila’s long-time treaty ally.

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The confrontation happened on a coral outcrop, which juts out of the high seas like an islet at low tide. Saligan and his men took a dinghy from their mother boat and went to collect seashells and fish for food during their sea voyage.

However, five Chinese coastguard personnel, three of them armed with steel batons, followed by boat, alighted on the islet and ordered the fishermen to leave.

One Chinese officer tried to confiscate the cellphone of a Filipino fisherman, who resisted by pushing away the officer’s hand. Both sides were documenting the confrontation, either with video cameras or cellphones, Saligan said.

“This is Philippine territory. Go away,” Saligan said he told the Chinese coastguard personnel, who he said insisted that they leave the shoal immediately. The Chinese did not speak and used hand gestures, he said.

“They looked angry. They wanted us to return our catch to the sea,” Saligan told a small group of journalists, including from Associated Press, in Manila.

“That’s inhuman because that was food which people should not be deprived of.”

Saligan said he decided to dump some of their seashells and fish back in the sea and returned by boat to his mother boat, the F/V Vhrayle, to prevent the dispute from escalating.

Philippine coastguard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said the written statements and video submitted by Saligan and his men have been validated as accurate by the coastguard.

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A report would be submitted to a multi-agency government group dealing with the long-simmering territorial disputes for possible actions, including the filing of a new diplomatic protest against China.

“Those actions were really illegal and the harassment that they did to our Filipino fishermen were unacceptable,” Tarriela said in a news briefing.

The Philippine coastguard remained confident, however, that the agreement by China and the Philippines to lower tensions would “have a positive impact” and foster a peaceful resolution of the long-seething disputes, Tarriela said.

Chinese and Philippine coastguard ships engaged in a series of alarmingly tense hostilities last year mostly off the Second Thomas Shoal, another hotly contested area in the South China Sea.

The Philippine government repeatedly protested the Chinese coastguard’s use of water cannon, a military-grade laser and dangerous blocking manoeuvres that had caused minor collisions off the Philippine-occupied shoal.

China has repeatedly warned of unspecified circumstances if the US and its allies continue to meddle in the disputes.