Quiboloy network called out for red-tagging anew

Pastor Apollo C. Quiboloy (Screengrab from SMNI News Youtube channel)

MANILA, Philippines — The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) has again called out the Sonshine Media Network International (SMNI), owned by televangelist Apollo Quiboloy, for red-tagging three journalists in one of its recent program episodes.

The NUJP was referring to the allegations made by one Jeffrey Celiz, who claims to have been a communist rebel, that journalists Atom Araullo, Inday Espina-Varona, and Vergel Santos were “operatives” of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), its armed wing New People’s Army (NPA) and political wing National Democratic Front of the Philippines.

Baseless claim

The unproven accusations were made on a program that SMNI streamed live on its Twitter account on Oct. 20.

One of the co-hosts of the program was Lorraine Badoy, a former spokesperson for the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac).

Badoy is currently facing imprisonment and/or a fine for making threats against a Manila judge who rejected the government’s plea to declare communist groups as terrorist organizations.

During the live-streamed program, the NUJP described Celiz as “listing targets for the audience.”

Celiz made the accusations in response to comments made by Araullo and Santos about the cases Quiboloy is facing in the United States.

In 2021, the Department of Justice indicted Quiboloy and other church members for allegedly coercing girls and young women to have sex with him, as well as running a sex trafficking operation that threatened victims.

US prosecutors also said that they would seek the seizure of Quiboloy’s US assets because they were ill-gotten, particularly from church donations that were allegedly used to pay for his lavish lifestyle.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has listed Quiboloy as a fugitive from criminal justice and included him in the agency’s “most wanted” list.

Validated prima facie

But moments after he tagged the three journalists were communists without proof, Celiz said in the SMNI program that the charges against Quiboloy were just “accusations and not convictions.”

“All this within minutes of labeling people who have not even been formally accused of any crime as communist operatives and enemies of the government, a label that can expose them to online harassment and even offline harm,” the NUJP said in a statement on Friday.

“[The] NUJP condemns this latest attack on members of the media community and call on our colleagues to speak out against the red-tagging that very clearly puts all of us at risk,” the group said. “Outright lies are weeds that must be uprooted in defense of democracy.”

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