A video circulating online and picked up by blogs have been claiming that a US senator defended Duterte and slammed the opposition Yellows. The featured image showed a man in suit and tie holding what appeared to be a photo of President Rodrigo Duterte.
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Some of the blogs that posted the video are phchronicles.info, topnewsph.info, and dutertewarriors.info, duterteparallel.org. The video has been shared at least 20,000 times on Facebook.
We clicked on one of the blogs and found an almost 19-minute YouTube video. The one we watched even had a “Protect the President” phrase in the video itself.
We watched the entire length of the YouTube video but we could not find what the headline was claiming as a US senator defending President Rodrigo Duterte and hitting the Yellows, or the Liberal Party.
What we found instead was Human Rights Watch (HRW) Deputy Director Phelim Kine talking in the US congressional hearing about the human rights situation in the Philippines. He definitely is not a US senator, as the headline claimed, and he was not defending Duterte.
Here is a clearer photo of Kine taken during that US congressional hearing on July 20, 2017:
Kine even tweeted about it.
I’m speaking July 20 at US Congress @TLHumanRights hearing on #Philiippines Prez #Duterte ‘s abusive “drug war” @hrw https://t.co/k7HTQ4wcNc pic.twitter.com/Tv0VknfptG
— Phelim Kine 林海 (@PhelimKine) July 18, 2017
Also present was iDEFEND Philippines spokesperson Ellecer Carlos.
Throughout the 19-minute video, all Kine and Carlos were talking about were the human rights violations in the Philippines, no defense for Duterte at all.
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In the 19-minute YouTube clip, here are some of the things that Kine talked about:
- Reasons why it’s a critical time in the Philippines: thousands of untold victims in the Philippine government’s war on drugs with zero accountability by the government; the launching of a propaganda effort to deny the human rights violations using a “big lie technique” with contradictory statistics and lies; and
- The government’s lies include following the rule of law, catching drug lords, and using fabricated statistics
- Victimizing the poor and kids as collateral damage
- How Duterte won on a platform promising violence
- How cops killed drug suspects after those suspects allegedly fought back
- How Duterte incited violence by encouraging the public to kill addicts, referencing to that time when Duterte himself said that he is willing to kill 3 to 4 million addicts
- How the US’ influence can be used to ensure that the Philippines will change its policy to protect human rights
Kine also talked about the same things in his article for HRW on March
Carlos discussed how Duterte issued threats against human rights advocates, how people who are against Duterte’s war on drugs are automatically called “Yellows,” and echoing Kine’s recommendation for the US Congress to make a statement for Duterte to stop the killings, threatening human rights advocates, and resolve the vigilante killings, among others.
Those who are expecting to watch a US senator defending President Duterte while watching the video would be disappointed. What you’ll find instead are human rights advocates describing the human rights violations in the Philippines and recalling Duterte’s statements that incited violence and included threats against those who go against his war on drugs. Therefore, the headline claiming that a US senator was defending Duterte is a misleading one.
Even the featured image that was used by the blogs sharing the video with the misleading title is an edited one. It was not Duterte’s photo that Kine was holding but an HRW report called “License to Kill” documenting the killings.
You can watch the whole video of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission Hearing where the 19-minute video was lifted from here:
Unfortunately, it seemed like the admins of the Duterte and Marcos fan pages and some individual Facebook users did not actually watch the content of the video because they still shared the blogs with the misleading headline and even thanked the American senator for coming to Duterte’s defense.
The Sara Duterte fan page even exclaimed, “Wow, nakakabilib naman ito. US senator talagng pinagtanggol niya si pangulong at sinupalpal ang mga dilawin. Panoorin niyo po mga kadds at talagang mapapabilib din kayo.”
Nakakabilib nga, as per what the fan page admin said of the misleading title. It’s truly unbelievable what some people will react to without even reading or watching the content, choosing instead to just rely on the headline.
Even the commenters on the Sara Duterte fan page urged the admin to carefully review the video because the men in the clip were not defending Duterte at all but were against Duterte’s war on drugs.
One even asked, “Are u yellowtards in disguse? OMG!”
OMG nga!
‘Is this site hacked?’
Sources: ( gmanetwork.com , abs-cbn.com , hrw.org )
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