The Philippine navy inherited the former U.S. tank-landing ship USS Harnett County in 1976, and ran it deliberately aground at Second Thomas Shoal in 1999. The Sierra Madre is now effectively a shipwreck, but the Philippine military has not decommissioned it. This makes the ship an extension of the government and means any attack on the ship is tantamount to an assault against the Philippines. Manila deploys civilian boats with a fresh batch of marines and 10 tons of food for resupply. In a bid to draw global attention to what Philippine officials have called China’s bullying tactics, they have invited more than a dozen journalists, TV cameramen and photographers to come along on the 30-hour-plus journey from the Philippine mainland.
Wait, so they put a boat on a strip of land and now claim it their territory, because the ship is not officially decommissioned, despite being a shipwreck (and thus useless as a boat)? Am I missing something here?
They put a boat on a strip of their land in Philippine waters.
That’s not how UNCLOS works.
You can’t beach a ship in your own territorial waters and then get upset when China comes to take your stuff and harass you? Do you understand what is even happening in the South China Sea?
Do you think the territorial sea extends 200nm?
I think that’s more plausible than China’s claim that their exclusive economic zone stretches over a thousand miles off their coast, and supercedes both Vietnams and the Philippines exclusive economic zones…
Glad that we agree that the South China Sea is entirely vibes-driven and has no foundation in international law.
The current Marcos government is a shift towards the United States and is gladly offering up The Philippines, a neocolony of the United States, as a forward base for the “containment” of China. This includes a reversal in both policy and propaganda when it comes to the South China Sea.
Gee, I wonder why? Why would they be afraid of a country preparing to conquer new teritory by force?
You think the Marcos government returned from partial alignment to the full alignment with the previous neocolonial regime under the thumb of the primary global superpower that already occupies their country and has done so for over 100 years because “China scary”?
lmao
