Senator Leila De Lima has been the subject of so many fake stories that it might be hard for some to distinguish what stories are true and which aren’t. These past few days, another story has gained momentum online as it received hundreds of shares from the netizens.
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The story claimed that De Lima allegedly said she is “ready to die as a martyr.”
It was shared by and to Duterte fan pages on Facebook and just like the other fake stories about her, many netizens believed it to be true.
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The story was also picked up by blog globalnews.favradio.fm, which was then shared by its Facebook page, gaining 173 shares, as of writing.
In fact, the Favradio article was shown to have received 5,838 shares.
The article was actually published on the fake news site thetrendingnews-tv.com. The website claimed that De Lima said she is prepared to become a “political prisoner” and die as a “martyr.”
She was quoted saying “I have long prepared myself to be the first political prisoner under this regime, because the criminal charges and prosecution are nothing less than a politically motivated act by the Duterte regime to clamp down on any vocal opposition against bad government.”
We found this statement to be partly true, except that the site made some changes at the end.
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De Lima’s real statement was, as reported by Rappler:
“I have long prepared myself to be the first political prisoner under this regime, because the criminal charges and prosecution are nothing less than a politically motivated act by the Duterte regime to clamp down on any vocal opposition against its support for a policy of EJK (extrajudicial killings) in dealing with suspected criminals.”
Thetrendingnews-tv.com also quoted De Lima in another statement: “If the government wants to kill me as they have long for wanted, am ready to die as a martyr for my stance.”
However, we could not find any other report showing De Lima uttering or releasing this statement. Considering the fact that the website even made significant changes to the senator’s statement, as what was shown above, it is likely that the website is indeed into faking statements to make their false claims believable.
The only thing this story got right was quoting Duterte saying “She should face the music,” something that the President really said on February 17, as per this ABS-CBN News report.
Be Informed. Beat the Trolls, Share the Truth!
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