TOTAL LIES: Our ships left two weeks later, ordered by del Rosario. China never pulled out its ships.
That was a total fabrication. Typhoon “Butchoy” never even entered the Philippine mainland, and moved on the opposite side of Luzon. And even if it had battered Panatag, its lagoon had been for centuries a refuge for even small fishing vessels to shield themselves from the roughest seas. It was a lie disseminated by almost all print and broadcast media on June 16: