When reports about how the Philippine National Police’s rifle deal with the United States is being halted due to concerns about the alleged human rights violations in the country, PNP chief Director General was said to have been “saddened” by the reports. President Rodrigo Duterte remained unfazed, though, and said that if the US decides to stop the sale of 26,000 assault rifles to the PNP, he will simply look at other suppliers, possibly Russia or China. The President even labeled this move from the US as a scare tactic.
Since the news erupted about the possible halting of the US rifles deal, articles about the PNP buying “26,000 IWI Tavor rifles” from Israel surfaced online. They have since been shared by several Duterte fan pages on Facebook.
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The articles were carried by OKD2.com and Tartey, which we have included in our list of websites that easily share fake and satire news. Both sites actually carried exactly the same article.
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According to the article, the cancellation of the US rifles deal with PNP “might blessing in disguise for the cops because they can instead order “high-powered IWI Tavor assault rifles from Israel.” OKD2 also claimed that PNP Spokesperson Chief Superintendent Saturnino Ocampo said that it would take time to close the deal with Israel, although this won’t have much of an impact on the war against drugs.
We couldn’t find any recent reports about the PNP turning to Israel to buy IWI Tavor rifles because they cannot get the M4 rifles they wanted from the US. Moreover, the source is OKD2.
Yet another rifle deal-related article surfaced at the start of November. It claimed that the Department of National Defense is set to order 100,000 AK47 assault rifles from Russia as replacement for “low quality” M16/M4 rifles from the US. The article said their source was a top Armed Forces of the Philippines official.
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The article also took note of the defective M4 rifles bought during the Aquino administration. This is true, although the rifles were recalled for defects and corrected, according to the military.
Du30newsinfo carried that article, although it cited OKD2 as its source.
And however we tried to look for other credible sources about this planned purchase of 100,000 AK47 rifles from Russia aside from OKD2, we couldn’t find any. This leads us believe that like the claim above about the PNP buying rifles from Israel, this is another fictional story from OKD2.
The latest reports also said that the US is not halting the M4 rifles deal with the PNP.
Sources: (newsinfo.inquirer.net)
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