A Tiny Crew, a Wooden Boat and a Mission to Hit Back at China
The Journal.
The Wall Street Journal
4.2 • 5.8K Ratings
🗓️ 24 October 2023
⏱️ 16 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | Off the coast of the Philippines in the South China Sea, there's a place called the |
| 0:10.4 | Scarborough Shoal. Scarborough Shole is a triangular beef, |
| 0:15.0 | and in the middle is a blue, beautiful lagoon. |
| 0:21.0 | That's our colleague Nijariqamandana and she says that the lagoon only has one |
| 0:27.8 | entry point. It's uninhabited it has no structures on it, and it's a traditional fishing ground for |
| 0:36.2 | Filipino fishermen as well as Chinese fishermen. So it is a site for fishing? |
| 0:41.8 | Yes, for generations, fishermen from around that region |
| 0:46.0 | from the Philippines in particular |
| 0:47.6 | have been fishing in the area. |
| 0:50.4 | For more than a decade, China's been blocking Philippine access to the shoal, |
| 0:55.5 | heightening tensions between the two countries. |
| 0:58.5 | Last month, China put up a floating barrier with white buoys at the entry of the lagoon, |
| 1:04.9 | and the Philippines decided to push back. |
| 1:09.9 | Members of the Philippine Coast Guard sailed to the shoal and snuck to the edge of the barrier. |
| 1:18.0 | So what they do is they go in, not in a Philippine Coast Guard vessel, but in a wooden fishing vessel that looks like the kind of vessel that Filipino fishermen in that area use. |
| 1:30.0 | It's called a bunker. |
| 1:32.0 | And there's a very small crew of the Philippine Coast Guard personnel. |
| 1:38.0 | They are not wearing their uniforms because they don't want to attract a lot of attention. |
| 1:42.0 | They want to look like fishermen and they want to get to the barrier. |
| 1:45.0 | One of the divers dives in, takes a small knife, |
| 1:52.0 | sores at the rope where it attaches to the anchor for the barrier, and the rope comes |
| 2:00.9 | loose. They then pick the anchor up, |
... |
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