South China Sea: Marcos Declares That China Won’t “Cow the Philippines Into Silence”
Following incidents in the South China Sea that resulted in injuries to Filipino soldiers and damage to boats, President Ferdinand Marcos said on Thursday that the Philippines would not be “cowed into silence” by Beijing.
In a message published on his X account, Marcos said, “We seek no conflict with any nation, more so nations that purport and claim to be our friends, but we will not be cowed into silence, submission, or subservience.”
“A countermeasure package that is proportionate, deliberate, and reasonable in the face of the open, unabating, and illegal, coercive, aggressive, and dangerous attacks by agents of the China Coast Guard and the Chinese Maritime Militia,” he said, will be the Philippines’ response. According to Marcos, “Filipinos do not yield.”
Following the most recent skirmishes in the disputed strait, whereby the China Coast Guard opened fire with water cannons at a Philippine vessel transporting supplies for soldiers stationed on an isolated coral, Marcos made his statements. The key waterway has a long history of maritime territorial conflicts between Beijing and Manila, and in recent months, there have been many incidents with their boats coming into conflict near disputed rocks.
“Water Cannon from China”
According to earlier reports from Manila, the incident on Saturday resulted in serious injuries to three Filipino naval members and significant damage to their supply vessel. China rejects competing claims from other nations, such as the Philippines, and an international decision that says its claim lacks legal support, claiming practically the whole South China Sea.
China attributed the recent increase in tension between the two sides in the highly disputed waterways to moves taken by the Philippines on Thursday. In a statement headlined “China Will Not Allow the Philippines to Act Wilfully,” Beijing’s defense ministry said that the current escalation of the South China Sea problem was directly caused by the provocations made by the Philippine side. “The Philippine side has repeatedly violated rights, provoked and caused trouble at sea, and spread false information to mislead the international community’s perception of the issue, which is, in a sense, going further and further down a dangerous road,” the statement continued, relying on the support of external forces.
