No, a photo in an online report does not show young men murdered after mocking Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on September 5, 2018 at 18:00
- 2 min read
- By AFP Philippines
Copyright © AFP 2017-2025. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
The report claims that three of the young men in the video were murdered. A screenshot of the report is below.
The photo montage below also appears with the false report. It has a headline that, when translated to English, says: “Three young men tagged as ‘MARIJUANA BOYS’ were abducted in different places and tortured before they were killed”.
The initial video of the young men that went viral is on Facebook here.
Local media reports said the six young men surrendered to authorities on August 28, 2018 after the video implicating them was posted online. Two of those reports are here and here.
Footage of them in custody was also published on the Facebook page of DK Zarate, a reporter for RMN DZXL 558 Manila.
The inset photo of the montage in the false report includes a screengrab of the young men from the above video. The screenshot is taken 12 seconds into the above video.
The much bigger photo showing a crime scene, which purports to depict their corpses after the murder, is from an earlier crime.
The misleading photo is a screengrab from a report by local TV station ABS-CBN that shows victims of a 2016 slaying in the central Philippines. The scene where the screengrab was taken is at 51 seconds in the report below:
The false online post also contains a shortened version of the ABS-CBN report on the 2016 slaying, which happened two years before the “Marijuana Boys” video went online.
The false report gives no other supporting evidence to make its claim.
While many media outlets covered the young men’s viral video and their subsequent surrender, none have reported they were tortured and killed.
The issue of the “Marijuana Boys” has received a lot of attention online and in traditional Filipino media because Duterte has led a crackdown on drugs in the Philippines that has seen thousands of people killed.
Rights groups allege police have conducted widespread abuses in the crackdown, including murdering drug users and addicts.
Duterte, who took office in the middle of 2016, insists he is conducting his drug war properly and surveys show widespread support among Filipinos.
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us
