May 10, 2022 | DFF, Opinion Articles
By Mu Sochua.
According to a story widely circulated on Philippine social media, Ferdinand Marcos Sr, the late dictator who imposed a brutal regime of martial law on the country between 1972 and 1986, owed his immense fortune to the payment of 192,000 tons of gold by the Tallano royal family of the Maharlika Kingdom for his legal services.
There is a problem with this account; there is not a shred of truth in it. The Maharlika Kingdom and the Tallano family never existed. Marcos’ fortune is better explained by rampant corruption and the plundering of the state coffers during his years in power, as several court cases in the country and abroad have demonstrated.
This is one of the stories that makes a huge campaign of disinformation aimed at whitewashing the Marcos regime, ahead of the Philippines’ upcoming general elections on May 9, in which Marcos Sr.’s son, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, is running for the presidency. The campaign portrays the Marcos dictatorship as a “golden age” for the Philippines and makes other fantastical claims, such as that the country was then the third richest economy in the world.
The strategy seems to be working. Bongbong Marcos heads all the opinion polls in the run-up to the elections, and the Marcos Dynasty seems to be poised to return to Malacañang, the Presidential Palace in Manila.
As elsewhere, social media is a powerful political tool in the Philippines. Sixty-eight percent of the country’s population have regular access to the Internet, and there are over 92 million recorded social media users, albeit this number does not necessarily represent individual ones. Filipinos are more active on social media than their counterparts in any other Southeast Asian country, averaging 255 minutes per day. All of this makes the country fertile ground for online campaigns of disinformation.
One month before the polls, Facebook’s parent company Meta announced that it had taken down up to 400 accounts from the Philippines that were engaging in “malicious activities” ahead of the May election. This is not new. Three years ago, Facebook announced the removal of at least 200 pages of coordinated “inauthentic behavior” linked to a network organized by the social media manager of President Rodrigo Duterte’s electoral campaign. His daughter, Sara Duterte, is now the running mate of Marcos, and commands a similarly large lead in the race for the vice presidency.
There are indications that these disinformation campaigns are part of a long-term plan to bring the Marcoses back to power. The creation of new pro-Marcos pages, many coming from troll farms and fake accounts, began to increase in 2014. Around the same time, the flamboyant Imelda Marcos, widow of the late dictator and mother of Bongbong Marcos, announced at her 85th birthday dinner party that she wanted her son to run for president.
More recently, authentic and fake accounts have been used on a massive scale to spread misleading or fake information regarding the presidential candidates, the issues at stake in the elections, or the electoral process itself. An instance of the latter is the false claim that it is necessary to pass a negative RT-PCR test to be able to vote, something that it clearly aimed at discouraging people from casting their ballots. This is creating an environment in which it is increasingly difficult for many voters to know what is true and what is not, making it all the more difficult to make an informed decision at the polling station.
And not all disinformation campaigns are as relatively innocuous as the story of the mythical “Maharlika Kingdom.” Disinformation campaigns in which the victims are accused of having links with the communist insurgency of the New People’s Army, a tactic known as “red-tagging” in the Philippines, have risen alarmingly, as the regional organization ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) has documented.
The consequences of these kinds of campaigns are often dire. Not only are they bound to have a significant impact on the elections, but they have resulted in harassment, attacks, disappearances, and even murders, according to a 2020 United Nations report on the Philippines.
The spread of disinformation online for political purposes is not a phenomenon exclusive to the Philippines, of course. Conspiracy theories like QAnon have helped poison the public debate in the United States; in Myanmar, Facebook was turned into a propaganda tool by ultra-nationalists to voice anti-Muslim rhetoric, contributing to extreme violence against the Rohingya minority; it has helped the far-right to make inroads in several European countries; and, more recently, it has been used by the Russian government to justify its brutal invasion of Ukraine in the eyes of its population.
At the core of this problem is the social media giants’ business model, whose content curation algorithms are designed for clicks and attention, so that users’ data can be sold to advertisers for enormous profits. Yet, too often what grabs our attention is sensationalism and outrage rather than fact-based information, thus allowing disinformation, extremism, and division to be massively amplified.
In order to face the challenge that these campaigns pose to democracy, it is necessary that social media giants like Facebook, TikTok, Twitter are made bound to a new set of rules and standards that prevent them from profiting off public harm and instead protect the public interest. Policymakers and lawmakers must start with establishing new data rights protections, requiring transparency in political advertising on these platforms, and adopting measures to combat hate speech.
This should be done in parallel with education programs to empower internet users to verify facts, identify false information and stop it from spreading, and support public service journalism so we can all operate and debate on the same set of accurate facts.
As challenging as it may seem, the phenomenon of disinformation campaigns should be addressed thoroughly in order for democracy to survive, in the Philippines as elsewhere. In the words of the Philippine journalist Maria Ressa, co-founder and CEO of Rappler and recipient of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, “you cannot have integrity of elections if you don’t have integrity of facts. If they make the facts debatable they are essentially dooming our nation.”
Mu Sochua is a Board Member of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) and a former Member of Parliament in Cambodia.
This article first appeared in The Diplomat.
Nov 9, 2020 | DFF, Opinion Articles
By Risa Hontiveros, Philippines MP and APHR member
“You spread the illegal drugs, sexcapades all your drivers, had a sex video, commit concubinage. Only stupid believe on you.”
This is just one example among many other online comments that my dear friend and colleague Philippine Senator Leila de Lima – who has been in prison for more than three years on trumped-up charges – has received.
The Internet can be a tough place for women. Although access to it has undoubtedly brought with it benefits, there are many dark elements to its explosion too, including how it has amplified the misogynistic attitudes that are still prevalent in society.
Here in the Philippines, this ugly rhetoric has been strengthened by our president, Rodrigo Duterte, who has become infamous for his sexist comments since taking office. He has spoken of wanting to rape women, saying he would give permission to soldiers to shoot female rebels “in the vagina,” and several other crass and misogynistic remarks.
Not only do the president’s words normalize talk around violence against women, but they also embolden his supporters to launch vicious personal attacks on social media, especially against his opponents – of whom I am one. As just one example, I was recently called a “thirsty slut” online for a dress I wore to last year’s State of the Nation Address.
All women can be the targets of online attacks, but those involved in politics are particularly susceptible as a result of being in the public eye, and especially so if they are outspoken.
While in the Philippines the issue has been heightened by the president’s words, these online attacks are happening globally. In Southeast Asia, where patriarchal and outdated sexist stereotypes remain prevalent, and where the population are “the most engaged mobile Internet users in the world,” it creates a “perfect storm” for the spread of online attacks against women.
For example in Malaysia, female member of parliament Kasthuri Patto was called a “deviant” for speaking out in defense of religious minorities and urging her government to sign a global decree that promotes freedom of religion or belief. Meanwhile in Thailand, Pannika Wanich, former MP for the recently dissolved Future Forward Party, faces regular sexist comments online. Last year she was attacked – including by fellow MPs – for wearing a black-and-white pantsuit in parliament, as opposed to the traditional black, during a period of mourning.
A study by the Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) found that social media is now the most common place where psychological violence – in the form of sexist and misogynistic remarks, humiliating images, mobbing, intimidation and threats – is perpetrated against female lawmakers.
Many of the attacks are sexually charged, including obscene images or disparaging comments, often drawing on information published on social media to suggest issues in their private lives. Women are also often told what they can or cannot wear, a clear violation of their right to freedom of expression.
The attacks have a major impact on those who are targeted. According to the IPU study, two-thirds of those surveyed said they had been distressed by their experience, while almost half said they had feared for their safety and that of their friends and family. In addition, nearly two-fifths of those subjected to these attacks said the incidents had undermined their ability to fulfill their mandates and freely express their opinions.
The attacks are also a major drain on resources, often creating additional workloads for women that their male counterparts do not experience. MPs who face online attacks have to devote significant time to measures such as improving their security, blocking or reporting abusive users, or combating disinformation.
This has a wider impact on society. Women who are attacked could decrease their online presence – and therefore their message, negatively impacting their ability to fulfill their mandate – or potentially leave politics entirely. The attacks also impact the next generation of female leaders, who could be dissuaded from entering politics as a result of the vitriol aimed at their predecessors.
Such an outcome would decrease the diversity of electoral representatives, and further entrench the male-dominated system that remains prevalent around the world.
On International Women’s Day this Sunday, we must urge governments around the world to do more to protect women from these online attacks. In my region, all countries have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and governments must take these obligations seriously and ensure their laws are in line with international standards.
Meanwhile, digital literacy across the region can be improved through a multi-stakeholder approach that includes input from the media, technology companies and civil society, among others.
In the Philippines, we are calling for the effective implementation of the Safe Spaces Act, which was enacted last year, and aims to tackle gender-based harassment, including online sexual abuse.
Finally, we must all contribute in our own way, by continuing to call out sexist and misogynistic comments whenever we see them, to ensure that those who resort to them are fully aware that these attitudes are never acceptable.
This article was originally published in the Asia Times
Nov 9, 2020 | COVID19, DFF, Statements
JAKARTA – Regional lawmakers have today called on authorities in Southeast Asia to stop using broadly worded anti-fake news laws to prosecute those accused of spreading disinformation about the coronavirus health emergency, and instead invest in public messaging campaigns to ensure their citizens are reliably informed about the issue.
In recent weeks, misleading information – so-called “fake news” – has been heavily shared across the region online regarding novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), which was first reported in Wuhan, China, in December. There have been more than 1,000 confirmed deaths from the virus – the majority in China – and infections have been reported in dozens of countries, including many in Southeast Asia.
“While it is important for authorities to prevent the spread of disinformation, and ensure accurate information about the coronavirus, across the region we are seeing a worrying trend of ambiguously-worded laws being used to prosecute citizens,” said Teddy Baguilat, a former Philippines parliamentarian, and Board Member of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR). “Laws that rely on vague prohibitions, such as punishing so-called ‘fake news’, excessively restrict the right to freedom of expression and should be abolished.”
In Thailand, authorities have used an “Anti-Fake News Centre” to identify and charge two people under the Computer Crime Act for sharing false information about the virus, and the pair each face a potential five-year jail term. A Malaysian journalist could also be given a similar sentence, after she was accused of causing “public mischief” under the country’s Penal Code for a series of social media posts on the issue. Despite calls for the reporter’s release from civil society groups, Malaysian officials have hardened their stance, and said they will speed up cases if more people are found guilty of breaking the law.
Meanwhile, in Indonesia two people have been arrested and face a potential five-year jail term for allegedly spreading disinformation, and Vietnam has issued a decree that allows for heavy fines for those found guilty of sharing fake news.
“It’s absurd, and wholly disproportionate, that people are facing a potential five-year jail term just for sharing false information online,” said Teddy Baguilat. “And think about the chilling impact such measures have on freedom of expression. Keep this up, and people will be too scared to share their opinion about anything.”
Chinese officials have been accused of censoring criticism of the government’s handling of the coronavirus, including by shutting down social media accounts used by citizens to share information, which experts say could have contributed to the illness spreading as quickly as it has, and contributed to the spread of disinformation.
“In public health emergencies, it is crucial that governments share correct and timely information with their citizens,” said Maria Chin Abdullah, a Malaysian MP and APHR member. “Authorities in ASEAN should not limit information, or shut down discussions.”
“Instead of locking up or fining those who share misinformation online – many who are acting out of fear or misunderstanding – governments must work together to develop a regional awareness campaign that provides people with relevant information, including regular updates on the number of cases, and what measures people can take to best protect themselves and their loved ones,” Maria Chin Abdullah said.
These recent developments highlight the spread of laws targeting online expression being enacted across Southeast Asia. However, there are a number of steps that governments can take to tackle disinformation that are less drastic and threatening to free speech as these laws. As well as investing in public awareness campaigns, governments can adopt longer-term measures such as promoting media and digital literacy in their respective countries by incorporating the subject into their school curriculums, and engaging with relevant civil society actors.
“It sets a dangerous precedent when the government decides it is them, and them alone, who defines what is and isn’t fake news,” said Teddy Baguilat. “Instead, governments need to think long-term and invest heavily in improving media and digital literacy. Let’s see this topic taught in schools across Southeast Asia, because it’s something that’s only going to become more and more important in the future.”
