The Philippine government stood with Vietnam after a Chinese ship sank a fishing boat from Vietnam in disputed South China last week.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said it was “crucial” that such incidents be avoided as these “undermine the potential of a genuinely deep and trusting regional relationship” between China and Southeast Asian nations.
“Our own similar experience revealed how much trust in a friendship is lost by it; and how much trust was created by Vietnam’s humanitarian act of directly saving the lives of our Filipino fishermen,” it said in a statement.
“We have not stopped and will not stop thanking Vietnam. It is with that in mind that we issue this statement of solidarity.”
Brunei, Malaysia, and Taiwan, along with China and the Philippines, have partial claims in the South China Sea.
A Chinese ship on April 2 hit a Vietnamese fishing boat carrying eight crew members near the Paracel Islands.
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China sinks Vietnam boat
According to a report by the South China Morning Post, China then captured the crew members and those of two other Vietnamese boats that came to the rescue.
Beijing, however, told a different story, saying it tried to avoid the Vietnamese boat, which “suddenly turned sharply.” It later released the Vietnamese crew on Thursday evening.
“There is never a good time to indulge in provocations; they usually end in defeat of aggression or a devastating price of victory. But it is always a good time to rise in the defense and affirmation of our respective sovereignties and in the peace and stability of our region, especially in a time of pandemic,” DFA said.
“The COVID-19 crisis is a crisis like no other in the past; not just in its potential calamitous scale, but in the hope to contain and stop it by unstinting cooperation and fullest trust [among] all countries, on the realization that if any of us fails the rest will follow; and if any of us succeeds that success must be extended to the rest of the world. Its solution is still distant and must extend to everyone or no one.”
The United States, on Monday, condemned China’s sinking of the Vietnamese vessel. It accused Beijing of “exploiting the world’s focus on addressing this global pandemic to assert its unlawful maritime claims in the South China Sea.”