A group of Filipino journalists from ABS-CBN news was chased by Chinese navy while heading to a shoal in the West Philippine sea to check out the current condition of Pinoy fishermen.
The team was planned to go to Ayungin shoal, a part of the Philippine exclusive economic zone, with their motorboat but before even reaching their target location, a ship of Chinese coast guard suddenly appeared.
After a while, the Filipino's motorboat received a radio message from the Chinese coast guard ordering them to introduce themselves.
With these, the captain of the motorboat decided not to proceed in the Ayungin shoal and just go back to Palawan because of the possible danger.
However, the Chinese coast guard's ship with bow number 5101 still ran after the group of Filipinos for about an hour.
The Filipinos thought that everything was fine after the coast guard disappeared but minutes later, two missile boats of Chinese navy chased them down again.
These missile boats are type-22 Houbei fast attack craft mounted with two missiles.
After 30 minutes, the Chinese boats stopped and went to the Mischief Reef instead, an artificial island which was occupied by China.
"Tiningnan namin ang location namin Kabayan sa GPS, kami ay 90 nautical miles lamang mula sa pinakamalapit na kalupaan ng mainlan Palawan," said Chiara Zambrano, one of the journalists.
"Malinaw na malinaw Kabayan na nasa loob kami ng exclusive economic zone," she added.
This incident is not new to Filipino fishermen. What they also suffer is the restriction they get when fishing since China started to invade the West Philippine Sea.
Watch: ABS-CBN News
No comments:
Post a Comment