Along the northwestern Philippine coast, poor children with claw hammers clamber aboard an abandoned fishing vessel to pry loose and steal rusty nails from its deck. It’s become a familiar sight in villages where some fishermen have been forced to give up their livelihoods since China took control of their fishing haven last year.
The Philippines Saturday rejected Taiwan’s allegations that its coast guards had intentionally murdered a Taiwanese fisherman whose death has triggered a major diplomatic spat.
The mayor of Kalayaan town in Palawan, along with around 200 people, were harassed by two unidentified vessels while they were traveling by sea before midnight Thursday, the local official said.
The shooting death of a Taiwanese fisherman by the Philippine Coast Guard has become the latest incident to roil tensions over territorial disputes in and around the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea), with Taipei calling Friday for Manila to apologize for the shooting.
China has sent one of its largest recorded fishing fleets to disputed islands in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea), state-run media said on Tuesday, amid tensions over Beijing’s assertion of its claims in the region.
The Aquino administration turned the tables on Beijing on Saturday, accusing the Chinese government of occupying a piece of Philippine territory in the South China Sea.
In agreeing to engage China in negotiations for a code of conduct in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) is sending a clear message to Beijing: It’s time to view the territorial disputes in the sea as a regional problem and they must be solved through regional, not bilateral, action.
Southeast Asian leaders on Thursday called for urgent talks with China to ensure that increasingly tense territorial disputes over the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea) did not escalate into violence.
Taiwan’s coastguards said Monday that Taipei had staged a live-fire drill within a hotly-contested island chain in the South China Sea, in a move that risks stoking regional tensions.
Chinese government ships were in the territorial waters of disputed Tokyo-controlled islands on Tuesday, Japan’s coastguard said.
Malaysian security forces on Monday stopped a boat carrying 32 armed Filipinos who were trying to join a two-month-old incursion into the disputed territory of Sabah, police said.
More Filipinos have been charged by the Malaysian government for allegedly being part of the intrusion in the disputed territory of Sabah by supporters of Sulu Sultan Jamalul Kiram III, Malaysian media reported.
