Gov’t using social media to harass activists – report

Launch of Amnesty International’s Report on Red-Tagging during their media briefing “I Turned My Fear Into Courage: Red-Tagging and State Violence Against Young Human Rights Defenders in the Philippines” held in Luxent hotel, Quezon City. The group defined this as authorities falsely labelling and vilifying people as Communist rebels and terrorists to incite hatred and violence against them. Seated are Amnesty International Philippines Vice Chairperson Mia Tonogbanua and Amnesty International Philippines Advocacy and Mobilization Dept. Manager Wilnor Papa. Inquirer photo/Lyn Rillon

MANILA, Philippines — Rights watchdog Amnesty International Philippines has urged the government to set ground rules for social media firms that are being used by some state forces to harass activists in a 75-page report released on Monday.

Titled “I Turned My Fear Into Courage,” the report focused on how online platforms such as Meta’s Facebook, the leading social media network in the country, were being used by some government agencies to Red-tag youth rights defenders.

READ: Red-tagging activists to hide government failures

Red-tagging is the labeling of individuals and groups as being part of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army, or as sympathizers. Unfortunately, these individuals or groups sometimes end up either being persecuted, prosecuted, attacked, or worse, killed by state forces or state-sponsored armed groups.

Cases of Red-tagging surged during the Duterte administration with the creation of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac), as observed by human rights defenders and civil society groups themselves in the report.

It cited a human rights impact assessment done by consulting firm Article One in 2020, which stated that a total of 20 Red-tagging cases on Facebook alone were “correlated with imminent arrest or murder.”

“Despite this knowledge, Meta has allowed state officials and other platform users to continue to misuse Facebook to harass, intimidate and threaten human rights defenders,” the report said.

Enabling environment

“Inadequate content moderation and ad approval mechanisms, and a failure to track the effectiveness of its risk mitigation measures have turned Facebook into an enabling environment that contributes to serious human rights violations,” it added.

This was evident in the case of Niña Torres, a youth activist and member of the Kabataan party list in Zamboanga City. During an event commemorating the declaration of martial law in September 2022, she and other members were handing out pamphlets on the injustices under the Marcos dictatorship when they noticed an individual taking photos of them.

The photos later appeared on a random Facebook page with a caption linking their group to the communist movement.

Seeing Red

The same thing happened in March this year as the group was handing out pamphlets critical of the government’s jeepney modernization program.

Even the NTF-Elcac has posted on its own Facebook page, without any accompanying proof, the photos or names of activists or youth groups it labeled as “fronts” for communist terrorist groups.

In one instance, it posted the photo of “lumad” activist Chad Booc, who was killed with fellow lumad teachers, a health worker and two drivers during an alleged encounter with soldiers in New Bataan, Davao de Oro, in 2022.

His death was widely condemned by rights organizations, civil society groups and even lawmakers. The alleged encounter was reported on several social media pages managed by the military, which insisted it was a clash between government troops and NPA rebels.

The Amnesty International report noted that in a Facebook post on April 14 this year, the NTF-Elcac came out with a photo collage tagged “scholars turned NPA,” showing six young people, including Booc.

The task force, it noted, portrayed the six as “NPA fighters who were killed by Philippine security forces between the years 2017 and 2024.”

“The post and Chad Booc’s case illustrate the link between Red-tagging and subsequent human rights violations, including arbitrary arrests and unlawful killings, these in turn delivering more material for the state’s narrative of universities and youth activist groups as recruiting grounds for the NPA,” the report said.

Amnesty researchers said the post was shared 1,800 times. Though they reported it to Facebook, which conducted a review, it was not removed at all.

“We urge the Philippine government to set ground rules that would tell the companies to never allow this kind of campaign. As I have mentioned, corporate actors follow the laws enacted in the country they are in,” said Wilnor Papa, Amnesty International Philippines activism and mobilization manager.

Papa said that another recommendation made by the report was to abolish the NTF-Elcac.