{"id":50618,"date":"2015-05-28T17:00:02","date_gmt":"2015-05-28T09:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=50618"},"modified":"2015-05-28T17:33:21","modified_gmt":"2015-05-28T09:33:21","slug":"filipino-vietnamese-troops-play-friendly-games-on-a-philippine-held-island-in-south-china-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/05\/28\/filipino-vietnamese-troops-play-friendly-games-on-a-philippine-held-island-in-south-china-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"Filipino, Vietnamese troops play friendly games on a Philippine held island in South China Sea"},"content":{"rendered":"
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MANILA, Philippines — Filipino and Vietnamese troops played football and tug-of-war Wednesday to foster camaraderie at a Philippine-held island in the South China Sea, where territorial rifts have escalated following China’s island-building activities.<\/p>\n

Navy spokesman Col. Edgard Arevalo said officials from both navies spoke at a ceremony and the two sides also exchanged “symbolic handshakes.”<\/p>\n

The activity on Northeast Cay island was followed by volleyball, football, tug-o-war, sack race and centipede race. Results of the games were not immediately known.<\/p>\n

Arevalo said Wednesday’s games were to reciprocate a similar event in June last year at the Vietnamese-occupied Southwest Cay about 4 kilometres (2.5 miles) from Northeast Cay, which the Philippines calls Parola.<\/p>\n

“Interpersonal interactions like this intend to bring about camaraderie and understanding,” Arevalo said. “It intends to enhance cordial relations while engaging opponent teams through sports events.”<\/p>\n

He said the activity was conducted independent of other countries and “it does not intend to pick on China.”<\/p>\n

China last year criticized the games as “clumsy farce” and reiterated Beijing’s “irrefutable sovereignty” over the islands in the South China Sea.<\/p>\n

Vice Admiral Alexander Lopez, whose command oversees Philippine-claimed areas in the Spratly chain of islands, said China has no reason to criticize the confidence-building activity, which the Philippines also pursues with other Southeast Asian neighbours.<\/p>\n

Although they’re technically rivals, Vietnam and the Philippines recently have discussed ways to co-operate to ease tensions in the disputed waters, where both have been engaged in dangerous standoffs with China.<\/p>\n

Southwest Cay, which the Philippines also claims and calls Pugad, used to be occupied by Filipino troops but was seized by Vietnamese forces in the 1970s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA, Philippines — Filipino and Vietnamese troops played football and tug-of-war Wednesday to foster camaraderie at a Philippine-held island in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":50657,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1482,95,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking","category-news-ph","category-news-w","mauthors-the-associated-press1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}