Interior Secretary Eduardo Año. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / NINO JESUS ORBETA
MANILA, Philippines — It’s the kind of fake news that Interior Secretary Eduardo Año won’t take sitting down.
A Cebu City resident posted on social media a supposed advice from the home secretary: Couples should practice physical distancing after sex. It went viral, getting shared by thousands, before it was taken down.
Año didn’t find it funny, and he filed a formal complaint against 26-year-old Gabriel Marvin Cabier at the Quezon City prosecutor’s office.
He accused Cabier of unlawful use of means of publication and unlawful utterances in relation to the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 and Article 142 of the Revised Penal Code or inciting to sedition as amended by Presidential Decree 1974 in relation to the same Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012.
Año alleged that Cabier circulated the fake news written in Visayan on his Facebook page “One Ride One Shot.” The fake advice got 11,000 shares, 3,600 reactions and 1,900 comments as of Aug. 11. The post has since been taken down.
There was no immediate comment from Cabier.
Warning
Jonathan Malaya, spokesperson of the Department of the Interior and Local Government, said Año filed the complaint on Aug. 20 after the Philippine National Police confirmed that Cabier was the administrator of the FB page.
“We pushed through with the filing of criminal cases as a warning to all would-be perpetrators of fake news to think twice before they do something similar. We will prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law. This is wrong and should not be tolerated,” Malaya said.
Freedom of expression, he added, “is not absolute especially if it distorts facts’’ and could not be used “to spread fake news or to dish out disinformation.”
Malaya said it was unfortunate that some people would “stoop so low and waste their time and energy to spread fake news and sow disinformation to malign people such as Secretary Año” during the pandemic.
He added: “We urge these people to use their creative minds instead on how they can complement the efforts of the government in spreading the right information and helping those in need.”