President Ferdinand Marcos says the Philippines will take countermeasures against China after confrontations in the South China Sea last week injured Filipino soldiers and damaged vessels.
“We seek no conflict with any nation, more so nations that purport and claim to be our friends but we will not be cowed into silence, submission, or subservience,” Marcos said in a statement on Thursday.
He said the Philippines would respond with a “countermeasure package that is proportionate, deliberate, and reasonable in the face of the open, unabating, and illegal, coercive, aggressive, and dangerous attacks by agents of the China Coast Guard and the Chinese Maritime Militia”.
He added: “Filipinos do not yield.”
Marcos’s remarks came as China blamed Philippine actions for recent rising tensions between the countries in the hotly contested waterway, which Beijing claims almost entirely.
Blaze Fm