‘The guardian of Scarborough’: how one Filipino fisherman is taking a stand against China
He has faced down Chinese coast guard rifles, and even engaged in a stone-throwing duel that shattered two windows on his outrigger.
“They’ll say, ‘Out, out of Scarborough,’” Renato Etac says, referring to Scarborough Shoal, a rocky outcropping claimed by both the Philippines and China. He yells back, “Where is the document that shows Scarborough is Chinese property?”
It’s like quarreling, like playing games ... yelling, dirty finger, everything’s there. Sometimes I use expletives in different dialects and I get to laugh when I see them, because they don’t understand what I’m saying.
At one level, the territorial disputes in the South China Sea are a battle of wills between American and Chinese battleships and planes. At another level, they are cat-and-mouse chases between the coast guards of several countries and foreign fishermen, and among the fishing boats themselves.
Indonesia seized a Chinese fishing boat last month and arrested eight fishermen, only to have a Chinese coast guard vessel ram the fishing boat as it was being towed, allowing it to escape.
Vietnam’s coast guard chased away more than 100 Chinese boats over a two-week period, its state media reported last week, and made a rare seizure of a Chinese ship carrying 100,000 litres of diesel oil, reportedly for sale to fishing boats in the area.
The South China Sea, a hodgepodge of overlapping territorial claims in the Pacific, is both strategically important and a vital shipping route for international trade. It may also contain valuable oil and natural gas reserves.
