MANILA, Sept 15 (Askume) – The Philippines said it will send a ship to Sabina Shoal to replace a coast guard vessel that returned to port on Sunday after a five-month deployment to a disputed island in the South China Sea.
Beijing had asked the Philippines to withdraw the 97-meter (318-foot) coast guard ship Teresa Magbanua, which the Philippines claimed was “illegally parked” on the atoll it claimed as part of its broader claim across almost the entire South China Sea.
“The Philippines’ actions have seriously violated China’s territorial sovereignty,” Chinese coast guard spokesman Liu Dejun said in a statement on Sunday, referring to Manila’s alleged “withdrawal” of its ships.
The Philippine Coast Guard and the National Maritime Commission (NMC) said the Teresa Magbanua was deployed to Sabina Shoal to monitor small-scale reclamation activities that Manila suspected China was carrying out in the area. The mission is now complete. “Someone else will take over immediately,” NMC spokesman Alexander Lopez said, citing orders from a Philippine Coast Guard captain. “Of course, we will continue to have a presence there.”
Sabina Shoal (known as Jianbin Reef in China and Escoda Shoal in the Philippines) is located 150 kilometres (93 mi) west of the Philippines’ Palawan province and is entirely within the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone.
Theresa Magbanua’s presence has angered Beijing, making the shoal the latest point of confrontation in the disputed waterway.
Last month, Manila and Beijing accused each other of deliberately ramming each other’s ships near Sabina after agreeing on a resupply mission for a Philippine warship that ran aground on Second Thomas Shoal .
The return of the Teresa Magbanua is necessary to tend to the crew’s medical needs and to receive repairs, and once resupplied and repaired, it will resume its mission together with other Coast Guard and military assets, “as a member of our sovereign defenders,” Lucas Bersamin, executive secretary and NMC chairman, said in a statement.
This follows high-level talks between Manila and Beijing in China last week , with the Philippines reiterating its position on the Sabena and China repeating its demand for the ship to be taken back .
The China Coast Guard said it will continue to carry out law enforcement activities in the waters under Beijing’s jurisdiction in accordance with the law to safeguard national territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests.
China claims sovereignty over much of the South China Sea, which overlaps with Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.
In 2016, an arbitral tribunal in The Hague invalidated China’s sweeping and historical claims, but Beijing refused to accept the ruling.
