1 week Ago By John Sitchon
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rapplerAds.displayAd( "mobile-middle-1" );CEBU, Philippines – A report from global rights movement Amnesty International (AI) revealed that state-sponsored online harassment against young rights defenders in the Philippines has greatly deteriorated their capacity to seek legal remedies and exercise their own rights.Released on Friday, April 4, the report, entitled, “Left to their own devices,” investigated the experiences of youth human rights defenders (YHRDs) who shared how online harassment had pushed them to minimize their online engagement with their advocacies, isolate themselves from social circles, and even opt out of reporting the harassment they face.
“The chilling effect of online harassment severely impairs the rights of these young human rights defenders. It not only threatens the individual, but also undermines their capacity to do their work to defend human rights,” Mia Tonogbanua, Amnesty Philippines vice chairperson, said in a press release.The project is an output of AI’s youth-led research initiative RightUp in 2024 that was piloted by nine YHRDs who probed and documented human rights violations committed against youth activists.
The report gathered respondents aged 18 to 24, mostly students, spread throughout the country. 94 respondents were made to answer online questionnaires while 29 participated in in-depth interviews.Most of the respondents lived in Manila, Baguio, Los Baños and Cebu — areas which AI described as having relatively great concentrations of universities and human rights groups.
According to AI, online harassment against YHRDs manifested in the form of hateful and abusive speech, targeted smear campaigns, and threats of violence. They added that it notoriously took place on Facebook.Based on the results of their online questionnaire, three out of five young activists experienced online harassment for posting human rights content.
67 out of 94 respondents stated that the harassment they experienced was tied to their human rights advocacy.Unsafe environmentThe report noted that the most prominent forms of online harassment, which included red-tagging, doxing, and verbal violence, affected YHRDs in the offline setting. According to the report, YHRDs who were supporters of opposition candidates during the 2022 elections said they were being trolled and/or threatened by supporters of the then-tandem of Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
and Sara Duterte.window.rapplerAds.
displayAd( "middle-2" );window.rapplerAds.displayAd( "mobile-middle-2" );“In the online questionnaire, the majority of respondents identified the 2022 presidential election as a prominent trigger for online harassment,” the report said.
The report kept the identities of the respondents and interviewees anonymous and gave each of them an alias. For the purpose of ensuring their safety, this article will also use the aliases provided.Mayari, a campus journalist from University of the Philippines Baguio, shared that their student publication had been subjected to multiple attacks by trolls due to their reportage on protests.
“Throughout the years, there have been protests being covered [by campus journalists], and there are comments that label the people from UP as communists,” they said. Mayari added that a member of their editorial board experienced direct military engagement via “Dumanon Makitongtong,” an approach similar to that of the “tokhang” that involves visits from military personnel to the residences of suspected drug peddlers.College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP) national spokesperson Brell Lacerna told Rappler on Tuesday, April 8, that campus press repression intensified during the previous elections with notable cases being school administrators censoring student-led reports and mock polls with national and local candidates.
“This year [2025], the College Editors Guild of the Philippines have reported more than 10 cases of campus press freedom violations in various universities,” Lacerna added.Based on CEGP’s case records between 2023 and 2024, there were around 206 cases of campus press freedom violations.The AI report pointed out that despite the country’s formal commitment to international human rights instruments like the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the national government had consistently failed to fulfill its obligations to protect human rights defenders in the country.
The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) in 2021 listed private institutions like Ateneo de Manila University and De La Salle University, and state universities like the University of the Philippines, as “recruitment and radicalization” hubs for insurgency groups.“Some universities have reportedly implemented restrictive student policies against socio-political activism, with threats of disciplinary action toward students involved in progressive movements,” the report stated.window.
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displayAd( "mobile-middle-3" );The Amnesty International researchers cited reports of National Service Training Program classes being used as avenues to red-tag students and organizations critical of the government, often labeling them as communist sympathizers.In October 2024, student publications and youth-led groups slammed a member of the Armed Forces of the Philippines for identifying the Kabataan Partylist and College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP), among others, as alleged “NPA recruiters” during a forum in a Cebu university.Left unheardBased on the report, the online harassment resulted in psychological distress, self-censorship, inactivity, isolation, downplaying the impact of online harassment and barriers to seeking remedies.
Sarita, a youth advocate for peace and security in Southern Philippines, criticized a group of government officials for breaching social distancing guidelines in her province during the COVID-19 pandemic.According to the youth advocate, a public official contacted her directly, threatened to reveal private information on her family and whereabouts, and even visited her school in an attempt to have her expelled.“It made me feel so weak, so inferior compared to these politicians with all the powers that they have.
They could just stop me and have me dumped somewhere...
I really felt weak and powerless,” Sarita said.Because of this experience, Sarita chose not to report to authorities and lay low with her advocacy online — a common response among most of the YHRDs involved in the research.Habagat, a student activist who was publicly red-tagged by the NTF-ELCAC’s Facebook page through a video post, told researchers that he left his advocacy organization and became inactive from the human rights movement for three years due to his experience.
The student activist had received death threats and messages suggesting he should be caught by authorities for his advocacy.“Reporting would mean appealing to the same entities responsible for my harassment,” Habagat said, explaining why he chose not to report the incidents of harassment.The AI report recommended the passage |of the Human Rights Defenders Protection Bill with “special attention to the risks and challenges faced by YHRDs and women defenders,” and the abolition of the NTF-ELCAC and the Anti-Terrorism Act.
The report also encouraged educational institutions to create a registry to document red-tagging and online harassment incidents within their jurisdiction and to set up comprehensive support systems for students, faculty, and staff, who experience these incidents. – Rappler.com.
