Press Release
August 21, 2019

De Lima to fake news makers: No heart, no conscience

Opposition Senator Leila M. de Lima has cried foul over the continued circulation of a hoax video about her even as she slammed the makers and purveyors of fake news directed to her as "evil men and women" lacking heart and conscience.

De Lima, the staunchest critic of the Duterte administration's murderous war on drugs, lamented how the fake news makers make a habit of besmirching her reputation and propagating hate online for their political and personal gains.

"Yung mga nasa likod ng fake video/fake news na naman (na umamin na daw ako bilang protector ng iligal na droga), these are evil men and women. Mga walang puso at konsensya!" she said in her recent Dispatch from Crame No. 572.

"Wala na po ba silang pagkaabalahan at pagkakitaan kundi ang manira ng dignidad at ng aking pagkatao?" she added.

A spliced video version of De Lima's privilege speech at the Senate about extrajudicial killings on Aug. 2, 2016 was posted by Pinoy Republic on Facebook as early as Aug. 8, 2016.

It has been gaining popularity of late as some sinister groups and paid trolls started sharing and reposting it online, along with other 31 fake news stories that have been so far manufactured to besmirch her name and reputation as a public servant.

The spliced video falsely implies, among others, that De Lima supposedly admitted to being a protector of Bilibid drug lords and that she purportedly surrendered her mandate as a Senator of the Republic.

De Lima, a social justice and human rights champion, said no amount of lies by political manipulators and paid trolls could erase her innocence from all trumped-up illegal drug charges filed against her by the government.

"Hindi po ako drug lord. Hindi po ako protektor ng drug lord. No fake news or perjured testimonies can ever obliterate the truth about my innocence," she maintained.

De Lima, who is currently under detention for bogus illegal drug charges based on manufactured evidence, has been continually targeted by fake news stories by paid trolls aiming to silence her from calling out the excesses of the administration.

Last January 2017, De Lima delivered a fiery privilege speech to denounce the unabated proliferation of fake news on the Internet and other social networking sites, where she likened fake news to a "virus" that poisons and corrupts the people's mind.

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