Karapatan demands PNP, AFP, NTC-ELCAC to bare advocacy groups, accounts they're supporting

Human rights watchdog Karapatan on Wednesday called on the state's security forces to disclose all the advocacy groups and Facebook accounts they are supporting after the social media giant's shutdown of alleged police and military accounts due to coordinated inauthentic behavior.

In a press statement, Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay said the military and the police should also reveal the budget spent on “what is clearly a coordinated machinery of mass deception to vilify, discredit, and incite state violence against government critics, activists, and human rights defenders.”

The group's call is addressed to the Philippine National Police, the Armed Forces of the Philippines, and the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).

"The government cannot lie anymore, and we demand the AFP, PNP, and the NTF-ELCAC to disclose before the public all these ‘advocacy groups’ and just how much of our taxes are being spent on their harmful lies,” Palabay said.

"What President Rodrigo Duterte himself has inadvertently admitted is that this fake online propaganda machinery taken down by Facebook along with these so-called ‘advocacy groups’ are indeed state-backed. Facebook’s takedown exposed the shamelessly deceptive practices that lie at the heart of the NTF-ELCAC’s ‘whole-of-nation’ campaign of state terrorism and mass deception," she added.

Palabay pointed out that the public has the right to know what the security forces support because their taxes "are being spent on and pocketed by the people behind these pages, accounts, and groups that spout lies against activists and human rights defenders — especially in the middle of this public health crisis."

She mentioned the case of Philippine Army Captain Alexandre Cabales whose account was one of those taken down by Facebook. Cabales is in charge of the Army's social media center.

He is the administrator of the Hands Off Our Children (HOOC) which was also one of the pages and accounts taken down by Facebook. The military said HOOC is a campaign launched by a group of parents to protect their children against "violent extremism."

Palabay then said this matter only shows that “along with operating fake social media accounts and pages, the creation of government-organized non-government organizations or GONGOs is part and parcel of the government’s counterinsurgency campaign."

"It is a well-known tactic used by repressive governments to deceive the public by appropriating, mimicking, and muzzling the civil society voice to create the illusion of grassroots mobilization supporting the government's fascist and anti-people agenda," she said.

"Any illusion of popular support for this regime is now out of the window. An honest-to-goodness democratic government would never desperately rely on a machinery of mass deception to assert its legitimacy, let alone to attack, vilify, and discredit its critics and civil society organizations," she added.

Both the police and the military have denied that they are behind the fake accounts which were purged by Facebook, a move questioned by President Rodrigo Duterte. They insisted that they are following the proper behavior on social media use.

The PNP and the AFP have said they are coordinating with the management of Facebook regarding these taken down accounts and pages.

GMA News Online has reached out to the PNP and AFP for comment on Karapatan's statement.—AOL, GMA News