Stop the Censorship!

Statement on the Meta’s Censorship of Progressive Voices in the Philippines

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 13, 2022

Reference: Tabitha Ponciano, Vice Chairperson, Malaya Movement USA

Malaya Movement USA strongly condemns Meta/Facebook’s censorship of progressive groups in the Philippines. This statement is in response to the recent censorship spree of Jose Maria Sison tribute posts and the shutdown of the Facebook pages affiliated with the progressive organizations Anakbayan, Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), and Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) in the Philippines.

We in the Malaya Movement USA urge Meta/Facebook to instead bar red-tagging and the known peddlers of fake news like Sonshine Media Network International (SMNI) and other National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) pages whose posts have unequivocally been responsible for endangering the lives of government critics.

For years, various sectors in the Philippines have been calling on Meta/Facebook to take action against red-tagging and other fake news peddlers in the Philippines. Instead, Meta/Facebook is censoring the very groups who have been victims of red-tagging and whose right to speech and protest are being violently stamped out by state forces.

Without exaggeration, the consequence of Meta/Facebook’s inadequate control over politically motivated disinformation is the piling up of arrests, torture, and killings of critics of government corruption and violence. Meta/Facebook was the supplier of fake news that led to the fraudulent re-election of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos’s family back into office. Combined with the shutting down of pages of human and civil rights organizations, Meta/Facebook’s conduct of “checks” isn’t merely inadequate– it is accomplice to every single arrest, torture, and killing of a Filipino by state forces and the disintegration of democracy in the Philippines.

Malaya Movement USA demands that Meta/Facebook reinstate the pages of progressive groups and individuals in the Philippines and instead do more to shut down the real perpetrators of disinformation, red-tagging and violence: Marcos Jr., the NTF-ELCAC, and Quiboloy’s SMNI.

Malaya Movement USA calls on concerned Filipinos in the US to join us in our campaign efforts against the unchecked proliferation of disinformation from perpetrators like SMNI and agents of the NTF-ELCAC and disinformation’s biggest purveyor, Meta/Facebook.