Five Chinese ships were found near Thitu Island, the biggest island in the Spratlys administered by the Philippines, a Filipino lawmaker said during a press conference yesterday. He said the information came from the Philippine military.
The area also known as Pag-asa Island in the Philippines is inhabited by close to a hundred Filipinos.
“China has deployed two frigates, one Coast Guard vessel and two large fishing vessels, with their maritime militia, one to three nautical miles north of Pag-asa Island,” representative Gary Alejano said. He also said that China blocked ships from the Philippines’ Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources from going to sandbars near the island.
He thinks China may be planning to occupy the sandbars but Rappler reported that the ships have not been spotted too close to them.
Alejano called on the government to assert our right to the area and to be more transparent about how they’re dealing with the dispute.
Last week, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that China stopped reclaiming land in the South China Sea two years ago, a statement verified by Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano.
But satellite images from a U.S. think tank show that China was reclaiming land as recent as August.
The Philippines won the arbitration case last July 2016 against China, but the the Philippine government has done little to enforce the ruling.
