Altered news report falsely claims victim of Duterte's drug crackdown 'still alive'

Published on April 9, 2025 at 10:51
3 min read
By Jan Cuyco, AFP Philippines

Following former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte's arrest in March over his brutal war on drugs, false posts seeking to discredit the victims' families spread online. The latest included an altered video shared hundreds of times falsely claiming it showed a woman holding a picture of a victim who is "still alive". The original clip shows the portrait of another man.

The TikTok video shared on March 18 shows a screenshot of a broadcast news report with a woman holding the portrait of an alleged drug war victim.

The clip also appears to show the same man -- who claimed to be her ex-boyfriend -- saying she lied that he was killed during Duterte's drug crackdown.

"You even told people that I was dead when I am just here working," he said in Visayan.

The Tagalog-language news chyron says: "Family members of drug war victims believe justice will be served".

The clip also shows text that reads, "Another victim that they claim to be dead but is still alive."

Screenshot of the false TikTok post, taken on April 7, 2025

Duterte's supporters published dozens of online posts targeting the families of drug war victims, seeking to discredit their accounts of extrajudicial killings after the former president's arrest (archived link).

Sheerah Escudero, the woman in the video, said people on social media had accused her of being a liar and a drug addict, with some even sending personal messages telling her she deserved to be killed and beheaded.

Her brother Ephraim was found dead in 2017 at the height of the crackdown.

Escudero and other kin of drug war victims filed complaints with Philippine authorities on April 4, demanding an investigation into the threats.

The false video spread elsewhere on TikTok and Facebook.

Comments suggest some users believed the man in the false post was related to Escudero and was still alive.

"File charges on that person who misused your picture...you're not an addict but they made you appear one," one user said.

"They say 30,000 were victims of EJK (extrajudicial killings). And then they show a picture of someone who's still alive," another wrote.

Edited photo

Google keyword searches of the news chyron in the false video found it originated from a report aired by Philippine broadcaster News5 on March 15, 2025 (archived link).

It shows Escudero holding a different picture.

News5 said on its official Facebook page that the false video was edited from "a report aired on #FrontlineWeekend on March 15 about the loved ones of the victims of the drug war" (archived link).

It asked the public to be more critical of social media posts.

Screenshot comparison of the altered post (left) and the News5 video, with altered elements enlarged using the image magnifier tool from The Verification Plugin, also known as InVID-WeVerify

Subsequent keyword searches led to the same video in a Facebook post uploaded on the account of a digital creator named Jay Borge Mercado Ugay on March 17 (archived link).

A photo similar to the one in the altered video can be seen on his account (archived link).

Escudero took to social media on March 18 to dismiss the false video (archived link).

"When did you become my ex, Jay Borge Mercado Ugay?" she said. "Also, look at that face -- it looks nothing like Ephraim."

Duterte's arrest sparked a firestorm of online misinformation, many of which AFP has debunked.

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