This picture taken on February 16, 2024, reveals a inflexible hull inflatable boat leaving a Chinese language coast guard vessel close to the China-controlled Scarborough Shoal, in disputed waters of the South China Sea. The Philippines on June 19, demanded the return of firearms and different tools looted by the Chinese language through the Philippines’ resupply mission. (Photograph by Ted ALJIBE / AFP)
PUERTO PRINCESA CITY, Palawan – China Coast Guard (CCG) needs to be made accountable for his or her “piracy” and may return the rifles and different tools they “looted” from navy troops throughout their mission to a army outpost within the West Philippine Sea.
Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief of workers Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr. made the daring demand on Wednesday because the army reels from the aftermath of CCG’s actions towards navy personnel resupplying BRP Sierra Madre in Ayungin (Second Thomas) Shoal final June 17 (Monday).
“For me that is piracy already, as a result of they boarded our boats illegally [and] they received our tools,” Brawner stated in a press convention right here at AFP’s Western Command (Wescom) headquarters.
READ: West Philippine Sea: Filipino sailors fought armed CCGs ‘with naked arms’
Brawner additionally stated: “We’re demanding that the Chinese language return our rifles and our tools, and we’re additionally demanding from them to pay for the damages that they’ve brought on.”
CCG rammed, towed, and even boarded Philippine vessels, a transfer which its spokesperson Gan Yu name “management measures” according to its assertion of sovereignty in virtually all the South China Sea — together with a lot of the West Philippine Sea — regardless of a 2016 worldwide tribunal ruling that successfully dismisses its claims stemming from a case filed by Manila in 2013.
Brawner stated the CCG personnel armed with bolos and knives boarded one of many navy’s two inflexible hull inflatable boats (RHIB) the place they seized firearms and tools.
Requested concerning the specifics, AFP Western Command chief Rear Admiral Alfonso Torres stated “seven firearms had been looted and forcibly taken” which had been “inside gun instances” and weren’t used through the resupply mission.
Torres additionally stated the CCG’s destroyed the RHIB’s outboard motor, in addition to “looting” navy personnel’s communication and navigational tools and even the troops’ private telephones.
Apart from materials damages, a navy personnel misplaced his proper thumb because the bow of CCG’s RHIB rammed the a part of the navy’s RHIB the place the troop’s proper hand was located.
READ: PH Navy sailor loses thumb, others injured in CCG ramming incident
“Sadly, the soldier put his hand there, so his finger was hit due to the burden and the pace of the Chinese language coast guard’s RHIB,” Torres stated, partly in Filipino.
“Luckily it was not his proper hand,” Torres stated.
Brawner stated regardless of such aggressive actions of the CCG, the AFP “had been in a position to restrain them from pursuing additional the disruption of our operations” as he vowed to proceed its resupply operations.
“Even if considered one of our personnel had an harm, we are going to proceed our [resupply] operations,” he stated.
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