US military forces aboard Amphibious Assault Vehicles (AAV) perform beach landing on the shore of San Antonio, Zambales during the annual “Balikatan” (shoulder-to-shoulder) war games with Filipino soldiers in the northern Philippines yesterday.
Reuters/Masinloc
Filipino activists denounced China’s coast guard yesterday for turning water cannon on Philippine fishing boats in disputed waters, near where hundreds of Filipino and American Marines landed on a beach in a mock assault.
The presidential palace in Manila said China’s coast guard used water cannon on Monday to drive away a group of Filipino fishermen at Scarborough Shoal, damaging some of their wooden boats. Chinese ships rammed a fishing boat in the area a few months back.
China in 2012 took control of Scarborough Shoal, about 130 miles west of a former US naval base northwest of Manila, preventing Filipino fishermen from getting near the rich fishing grounds.
“China has no right to use water cannon on the poor fishermen,” Renato Reyes, secretary-general of left-wing activist group Bayan (Nation), said in a statement, while criticising the government’s dependence on the US military to protect the country.
“To stand up to China, we need to develop our economy and our capacity for external defence. We can’t do this by hanging on the coat tails of Uncle Sam.” One fisherman said he had heard talk on his radio of the Chinese coast guard using water cannon.
“I was some miles away when I heard the fishermen calling for help when a Chinese ship used water cannon on them,” said Michael Lanog, 32, from the coastal village of Masinloc.
China claims most of the potentially energy-rich South China Sea, with overlapping claims from the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan, and denies charges its actions in what it says is its own territory are provocative.
The Foreign Ministry has not commented on the latest accusations.
Philippine President Benigno Aquino has directed the Foreign Affairs and National Defence departments to come up with a response to the water cannon incident, said presidential spokeswoman Abigail Valte.
Philippine and US Marines resumed their biggest combined military exercise in 15 years yesterday, a demonstration of Washington’s commitment to its long-time ally as it rebalances to Asia.
Not far from Scarborough Shoal, about 750 Marines from the Philippines and US landed on a beach in two waves using amphibious assault vehicles to retake an island in a mock battle during the largest drills in years in the country. “This is an exercise,” Colonel Doroteo Jose Jalandoni told journalists at a naval base in Zambales province.
“We are not looking at other things. We just want to improve our skills and proficiency.”
Govt seeks more military aid from US
The Philippines said yesterday it would soon ask the US for more military equipment and training to build its defences, as it faces Chinese “aggressiveness” in disputed waters. As hundreds of Filipino and American Marines simulated an amphibious assault to reclaim territory from invaders during annual war games, military chief General Gregorio Catapang said he was drafting a “wish list” for US aid. Catapang said the Philippines would ask for “equipment and training”, when Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario travelled to the US in about a week’s time.
“The US has told us that they will help us develop our capabilities, and now, we are focused on maritime security,” Catapang said as he watched tanks emerge from the sea and roll onto the beach.
“We want to have capability on wetland, marshland and beach landings,” he said when asked to elaborate on the contents of the “wish list”. He said he hoped the US military would train his men on the operation of amphibious tanks, which the Philippines is buying for the first time this year as part of a defence upgrade.
The US is already the biggest military supplier to the Philippines, a former colony to which it remains allied by a mutual defence treaty.
