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| - SUMMARY
This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.
At a glance:
- Claim: Senator Leila de Lima wrote a letter to US President-elect Joe Biden and begged him to free her from prison.
- Rating: FALSE
- The facts: De Lima wrote a letter to US President-elect Joe Biden on November 18 to congratulate him, not to beg him to free her.
- Why we fact checked this: Multiple Facebook pages and accounts posted a video with this claim. One of the videos was flagged by Facebook’s monitoring tool for verification. The videos have thousands of views combined as of writing.
Complete details:
Multiple Facebook accounts and pages uploaded a video about how Senator Leila de Lima wrote a letter to US President-elect Joe Biden. The accounts and pages wrongly captioned their posts by claiming De Lima begged Biden to free her from prison.
This claim is false because there was no mention nor request from De Lima for her freedom in the letter she sent to Biden, which was dated November 18. Inquirer.net uploaded a copy of De Lima’s letter in a report published on November 26.
In the letter, De Lima called Biden’s victory over US President Donald Trump a “beacon” for Philippine democracy. She also likened Trump to President Rodrigo Duterte.
“As you know, President Duterte is cut out from the same cloth as President Trump in their politics of lies, hate, and demonization, as well as in their cornucopia of insanities in between. President Trump’s inexplicable inaction on COVID-19 cost the lives of about 250,000 Americans; President Duterte’s drug war has killed tens of thousands of mostly poor Filipino civilians, innocent human rights defenders, and journalists,” De Lima said.
The video originally came from YouTube channel DAILY NEWS GovtPH. Although the content of the video did not directly say that De Lima begged Biden (it said her letter “seemed” like she was begging), the thumbnail it used had the words “Please tulungan mo akong makalaya (help me get out).”
Claim Check, Facebook’s monitoring tool that identifies potentially dubious posts, flagged the video for fact checkers to verify. Using Facebook search, Rappler found 6 pages and one account that uploaded the video and said in their captions that De Lima begged for her freedom.
The Facebook posts had 25,298 combined views as of writing, while the YouTube video had 3,391 views.
De Lima has been a frequent target of disinformation on social media.
The senator has been detained since February 24, 2017, over drug charges stemming from her alleged links to drug lords detained in the New Bilibid Prison. De Lima said these accusations were made up in retaliation for her criticism of human rights violations under the Duterte administration. (READ: EXPLAINER: What is Leila de Lima being accused of?) – Pauline Macaraeg/Rappler.com
Keep us aware of suspicious Facebook pages, groups, accounts, websites, articles, or photos in your network by contacting us at factcheck@rappler.com. Let us battle disinformation one Fact Check at a time.
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