On April 19, 2012 I wrote an article about using The Lighthouse as a Sovereignty Symbol to mark a nations claims to disputed lands. One of the disputed lands was the Scarborough Shoals of my new homeland of the Philippines, just off the central west coast of the largest island Luzon where I am living.
The story below is from the military analysis blog by albert e. and gives a better perspective on the matter, plus a bit of historical information to clarify the whos and whys. A nice reference to a Tom Clancy novel as well.
Updates to this conflict are posted when available in the
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sunday, july 15, 2012
Scarborough Fair?
This is coolbert:
NO, NOT Scarborough Fair but Scarborough Shoals.
Spratly Islands, South China Sea, and now Scarborough.
That latest incident involving “land” and territorial claims in the South China Sea, on this particular occasion just recently, Filipino and Chinese warships [patrol craft] facing off – – the punador [point of honor] being the Scarborough Shoals.
NOT even islands or a land mass but reefs and chunks and bits of rock only visible at low tide off the coast of Luzon, within the limits of what the Filipino claims as an Economic Exclusion Zone [EEZ] but is also claimed by China.
“on April 11, 2012, the Philippine navy stopped and boarded eight Chinese fishing vessels in the shoals. In order to demonstrate that the Chinese fishermen had not been innocently deep-sea fishing in the area, the navy took pictures of one of the crews standing on a pile of giant clams presumably taken from the shoal.”
Chinese fishing vessels confronted by the Philippine Navy, further confrontation occurring with the intervention of Chinese naval forces!!
“Scarborough Shoal or Scarborough Reef [more correctly described as a group of rocks or very small islands plus reefs in an atoll shape], rather than as a shoal, is located between the Macclesfield Bank and Luzon Island of the Philippines in the South China Sea” Continue reading Reprint – NO, NOT Scarborough Fair but Scarborough Shoals.
