(Eagle News) – Malacañang again expressed its concern about the Chinese warships which have been recently sighted to be passing through the Sibutu Strait, saying that the Philippine government should know the reason for their passage.
“We want to know bakit sila doon dumadaan,” Presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said on Saturday, August 17.
Panelo said that the repeated passage of the Chinese warships — an issue that was earlier raised by Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana – is already a cause for concern.
“As Mr. Lorenzana said… the incident has been repeatedly done and, therefore, it is becoming an irritant, and we have to know exactly why they’re passing through that strait when the shortest route going to China can be done on a different route,” he noted.
– President Duterte’s call-
Panelo said that raising this issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping would be the call of President Rodrigo Duterte when he visits China this August.
“That’s the call of the President, whatever issue he wants to take with President Xi,” he said.
The Philippine military had noted the passage of two Chinese warships in Sibutu Strait near Tawi-Tawi in July. This month, three more warships were sighted.
Defense Secretary Lorenzana had earlier said that there had been four instances since February that Chinese warships had been sighted in Sibutu Strait.
-No longer an issue of innocent passage-
Lieutenant General Cirilito Sobejana, commander of the Armed Forces of the Philippines Western Mindanao Command, said that these incidents were not anymore considered innocent passage.
Panelo said that such actions from China were no longer acts of friendship as the warships passed through Sibutu Strait without informing the Philippine government about it. He said he would raise this issue with Chinese Ambassador Zhao Jianhua.
“Sabihin mo na lang na we express concern with that kind of incident. Because if they keep on saying that we’re friends, I don’t think this is an act of friendship,” he said in an earlier press briefing on Thursday, August 15.
