Hong Kong — The Philippines has accused China’s Coast Guard of launching a “brutal assault” with bladed weapons during a South China Sea clash earlier this week, a major escalation in a festering dispute that threatens to drag the United States into another global conflict.
Footage released by the Philippines’ military on Thursday showed Chinese coast guard officers brandishing an axe and other bladed or pointed tools at the Filipino soldiers and slashing their rubber boat, in what Manila called “a brazen act of aggression.”
The Philippines and China have blamed each other for the confrontation near the Second Thomas Shoal in the contested Spratly Islands on Monday, which took place during a Philippine mission to resupply its soldiers stationed on a beached World War II-era warship that asserts Manila’s territorial claims over the atoll.
The incident is the latest in a series of increasingly fraught confrontations in the resource-rich and strategically important waterway.
But the scenes captured in the latest footage marked a new watershed in the long-simmering tensions, with China adopting new, far more openly aggressive tactics that, analysts say, appear calculated to test how the Philippine and its key defense ally – the US – will respond.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Wednesday “law enforcement measures” taken by its coast guard in the confrontation were “professional and restrained” and “no direct measures were taken against Philippine personnel.”
Collin Koh, research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said it was unprecedented for China’s maritime law enforcement to board a Philippine naval vessel.
“They can be rubber boats, but it doesn’t change the fact that they are Philippine Navy vessels, and according to international law, they enjoy what we term as sovereign immunity,” Koh said. “That is very dangerous, because, if anything, that could even be construed as an act of war.”
Boats ‘looted’
At a news conference on Wednesday, senior Philippine military officials said China’s Coast Guard officers “illegally boarded” the Philippine rubber boats, “looted” seven disassembled rifles stored in gun cases, “destroyed” outboard motor, communication and navigation equipment and took the personal cellphones of Filipino personnel.
“They deliberately punctured our rubber boats using knives and other pointed tools,” said Alfonso Torres Jr., commander of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Western Command.
A Philippine Navy serviceman on the rubber boat lost his right thumb when the Chinese Coast Guard rammed it, Torres said.
China’s Coast Guard also deployed tear gas, “blinding” strobe lights and continuously blared sirens, the AFP said.
“Only pirates do this. Only pirates board, steal, and destroy ships, equipment, and belongings,” General Romeo Brawner Jr, Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, said in a statement.
“The Chinese Coast Guard personnel had bladed weapons and our personnel fought with bare hands. That is what’s important. We were outnumbered and their weapons were unexpected but our personnel fought with everything that they had,” Brawner added.
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