Manipulated Dubai, East Timor clips falsely shared as 'rally for Philippine VP Duterte'
- Published on December 13, 2024 at 08:49
- 4 min read
- By Lucille SODIPE, AFP Philippines
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As Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte faced a probe into allegations she plotted to assassinate her estranged ally President Ferdinand Marcos, footage surfaced online alongside false claims it showed massive crowds rallying to support her. The video compilation actually showed competitors at a fun run in Dubai and a Catholic procession in East Timor when Pope Francis visited. The clips were edited to add chants of support for Duterte.
"Duterte supporters look like ants," read Visayan-language overlaid text on a Facebook video posted on November 26.
The video showed a sea of people in green -- the colour of Duterte's 2022 election campaign -- and a second clip of crowds and vehicles in the street at night.
Chants of "Duterte, Duterte!" could be heard throughout the video.
The video spread across Facebook, TikTok and YouTube as Duterte's supporters gathered at the EDSA Shrine in Quezon City -- the site of the 1986 People Power Revolution that ousted Marcos's father -- to show support for the embattled vice president (archived link).
Under investigation for alleged misuse of millions of dollars in funds as education minister and as vice president, Duterte was thrust into further controversy after a heated weekend press conference, where she claimed to have ordered the assassination of President Marcos, his wife Liza Araneta-Marcos, and cousin Martin Romualdez, should an alleged plot to kill her succeed (archived link).
The Marcos-Duterte alliance that swept to power in 2022 collapsed spectacularly in the lead-up to next year's mid-term elections, with both sides trading allegations of drug addiction.
However, the clips in the video were taken from unrelated events and the audio manipulated.
Dubai fun run
The first clip corresponds to a video of a running event in Dubai on November 24, which AFP previously fact-checked when it was shared with a similar false claim.
Reverse image searches and keyword searches found the clip corresponds to the 33-second mark of a video posted by the Dubai government's media office showing the same stretch of road packed with people in green shirts (archived link)
The event, billed as the "world's largest free fun run," set a record with 278,000 participants, UAE-based English-language newspaper Gulf News reported (archived link).
The footage matches Google Street View images of Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the altered video (left) and Google Maps Street View of the Sheikh Zayed Road (right), with similarities marked by AFP:
Meanwhile, keyword searches revealed the chant in the clip was taken from a YouTube video from April 5, 2016, showing supporters cheering for former president Rodrigo Duterte, the vice president's father, during a campaign visit to a city in the central Philippines in 2016 (archived here and here).
Pope in East Timor
AFP also previously debunked the second clip when it circulated in similar posts that falsely portrayed it as a rally in support of the Duterte family.
The video was first posted on TikTok by the account @rey.marques on September 11 with hashtags suggesting it was filmed during Pope Francis's visit to East Timor (archived link).
The pontiff celebrated mass for around 600,000 people in the tiny Southeast Asian nation, the largest papal turnout by population proportion outside the Holy See, according to the Vatican (archived link).
AFP confirmed the video was filmed near the Raikotu General Cemetery in the capital Dili, using Google Street View imagery from the area (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the altered video (left) and the original TikTok footage (right):
The sound of crowds shouting "Duterte! Duterte!" in the clip was taken from a Facebook video posted on June 30 by pro-Duterte broadcaster SMNI about a rally in Hong Kong by supporters of the family on June 30, 2024 (archived link).
Philippine news organisation Rappler has also debunked the manipulated video.
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