About 100 rights advocates and fishers, along with journalists, yesterday set sail for a disputed shoal in the South China Sea, while China Coast Guard vessels began shadowing the flotilla.
The Philippine Coast Guard deployed three patrol ships and a light plane to keep watch from a distance.
The flotilla set off from Zambales Province to assert Manila’s sovereignty over the Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島) — which Taiwan also claims — and outlying waters.
Photo: AFP
The Philippine Navy dispatched a ship to help keep an eye on the participants.
About 100 small wooden fishing boats with bamboo outriggers initially joined the voyage to help distribute food packs and fuel to fishers, and lay a dozen territorial buoys about 20 nautical miles (37km) from the coast before returning to Zambales, said Emman Hizon, one of the organizers.
Four larger wooden boats with more than 100 people, including a Filipino and two foreign Roman Catholic priests, fishers and journalists then proceeded to the shoal and were expected to reach its outlying waters early today, Hizon said.
The rights advocates, who belong to a non-government coalition called Atin Ito, or “This is Ours,” said that they would seek to avoid confrontation, but were prepared for any contingency.
“Our mission is peaceful, based on international law and aimed at asserting our sovereign rights,” said Rafaela David, a lead organizer. “We will sail with determination, not provocation, to civilianize the region and safeguard our territorial integrity.”
In December last year, David’s group with boatloads of fishers tried to sail to another disputed shoal, but cut the trip short after being tailed by a Chinese ship.
China effectively seized the Scarborough Shoal, a triangle-shaped atoll with a vast fishing lagoon ringed by mostly submerged coral outcrops, by surrounding it with its coast guard ships after a tense standoff with Philippine government ships in 2012.
Manila brought the dispute to international arbitration in 2013 and largely won with a tribunal in The Hague ruling three years later that China’s expansive claims based on historical grounds in the busy seaway were invalid under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The ruling declared the Scarborough Shoal a traditional fishing area for fishers from the Philippines, China and Vietnam.
China refused to participate in the arbitration, rejected the outcome and continues to defy it.
Later yesterday, Hizon said that China Coast Guard vessels were shadowing them.
Three clearly marked China Coast Guard vessels sailed within sight of the convoy at dusk and broadcast radio warnings heard aboard one of the Philippine boats as the convoy moved closer to Scarborough Shoal, he told reporters.
Additional reporting by AFP
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