Filipinos push for probe into US disinformation

MANILA — Lawmakers in the Philippines, including the head of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, are seeking an investigation into a secret United States military propaganda operation that aimed to cast doubt among Filipinos about China's vaccines during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Philippine Senator Imee Marcos, who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, and House Representative France Castro filed resolutions in the country's Congress this week to initiate the probe, according to documents reviewed by Reuters.

A Reuters investigation last week detailed how the Pentagon ran a clandestine influence campaign in 2020 and 2021 to denigrate the Sinovac vaccine and other pandemic aid from China across the developing world.

This is the first time a media outlet has exposed this clandestine operation.

"Why did you do it when people were dying? We were desperate," Nina Castillo-Carandang, a former adviser to the World Health Organization and the Philippines government during the pandemic, said.

"We don't have our own vaccine capacity" and the US propaganda effort "contributed even more salt into the wound", she said.

According to the investigation, the Philippines had among the worst inoculation rates in Southeast Asia. Only 2.1 million of its 114 million population were fully vaccinated — far short of the government's target of 70 million. In June 2021, COVID-19 cases in the Philippines exceeded 1.3 million, and almost 24,000 Filipinos died from the virus.

Sowing doubt

"It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other lifesaving aid that was being supplied by China," Reuters said in the investigation.

Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military's propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vaccine campaign, it said, adding that social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines — China's Sinovac inoculation.

Sources involved in its planning and execution said the Pentagon, which ran the program through the military's psychological operations center in Tampa, Florida, disregarded the collateral impact that such propaganda may have on innocent Filipinos.

The effort started under former president Donald Trump and continued months into Joe Biden's presidency, Reuters found — even after alarmed social media executives warned the new administration that the Pentagon had been trafficking in COVID-19 misinformation.

The Senate inquiry is intended to examine the Reuters findings and "determine the ramifications of the actions of the US military, any potential breach of international law by the United States of America, and the possible legal recourse available to the Philippines, considering that such (an) anti-vax and misinformation campaign threatens national security", according to the resolution from Marcos, who is the sister of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

Castro's resolution, which was also signed by two other lawmakers, urges the nation's House of Representatives to conduct an investigation into the US military campaign.

It said "such underhanded tactics by a foreign military power sowing disinformation in the Philippines are a brazen affront to our national sovereignty and the democratic rights of Filipinos to freely access truthful information vital to public health and safety".

Senator Marcos told reporters in the Philippines this past week that she was motivated to investigate the matter because she believed it may have put the lives of Filipinos at risk.

The Reuters investigation was based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former US officials, military contractors, social media analysts and academic researchers.

Some public health experts said the propaganda program endangered lives.

"I don't think it's defensible," Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine, said. "I'm extremely dismayed, disappointed and disillusioned to hear that the US government would do that."

Agencies - Xinhua