"This is just the latest in a string of media misinformation, or disinformation."
"This is just the latest in a string of media misinformation, or disinformation."
Last week, President Rodrigo Duterte cleared Davao-based businessman Michael Yang of any involvement in illegal drug trade, citing his close ties with Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines, Zhao Jianhua, although this was marred by some media outfits playing a malicious spin on the President’s pronouncement, which initially placed the Chinese ambassador in cahoots with a suspected big-time drug lord.
Fortunately, one of the media outfits, Rappler, took down its headline depicting the Chinese ambassador as such before it could do any permanent damage.
This was after Duterte himself quickly corrected the grossly damaging misinformed headline in the afternoon of the same day.
Given the full text of President Duterte’s talk, it became clear to many how malicious the distortion in the headline and reports of some of the mainstream media and news sites were. Some of them are demonstrably US supported, which lead analyst to believe it was a media operation to besmirch the Chinese government and the very successful Chinese ambassador to Manila personally.
In the President’s talk it was clear he used the Tagalog term “daw” (or “so said” or “so says,” some translate it to “alleged” or “supposedly”) several times to the claims against the so-called wealthy ‘drug pusher’) to denote his skepticism. Still, malicious headlines portrayed the President as linking the two.
While the derogatory headline may seem to some in the Philippines to be a small error after it was admitted and taken down, for a Chinese official this is a serious matter. Besides, it was a severely unjust and unfair insinuation on the Chinese ambassador to Manila who has comported himself in the most exemplary manner throughout the four years he has been at his duties. This is one of the most effective and historic performance of a Chinese ambassador to the Philippines and at a most crucial period in the relations of the two countries at that. It also reflects China’s unassailable track record in the anti-illegal drug campaign.
Just less than two months ago, on Aug. 24 to be exact, the Asia Times reported that a joint anti-drug effort by Chinese and Vietnamese authorities busted a transnational heroin smuggling ring. A series of joint operations resulted in more than 420 cases and the arrest of 483 suspects—41 of them identified as Vietnamese nationals, the news report citing An Guojun, a senior Chinese security official. The wanted ringleader and accomplices were arrested. The success was attributed to the shared intelligence with Vietnamese officials after Vietnam’s director of Public Security Hu Jin paid a visit to China in early May 2018.
Some 263 kilograms of narcotics, heroin and stimulants were confiscated and a fugitive named Wei Wenshi, who was wanted by Vietnamese police, was also caught in the operations. The report indicated that in July 2017 the Public Security Department in Chongzuo City, Guangxi received a tip-off that a Guangxi man surnamed Gan was in collaborating with a Vietnamese dealer Wei to smuggle drugs from Vietnam to the Pingxiang region for sale in China. Chinese authorities arrested the drug traders after eight months of surveillance and investigation.
Vietnam, which in other issues such as its disputes with China over the Paracels can be a tough nut to deal with for China, cooperates fully with China when it comes to illegal drugs interdiction. It has been a very fruitful collaboration on both sides. The Philippines should learn from this and the Philippine media must stop all its past nonsense of associating all the drugs problems of the country to China without distinguishing the Chinese government’s efforts to support the international community in stopping the global drugs scourge from drugs traders from the civilian sectors that are in fact often operating from out of Hong Kong and Taiwan too.
In fact, to justify China’s anti-drugs war credentials would take a mile-long list of all the actions the Chinese government has taken to end the global scourge.
China strengthened its partnerships with UNODC, INCB and other international organizations, and in anti-drug cooperation platform in Great Mekong Sub-region, ASEAN and China Drug Control Mechanism, Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the BRICS. In 2016 alone, China successfully closed a total of 87 international and cross-border drug cases with more than 20 countries, and provided assistance, training and alternative economic development programs on drug control to these.
During Duterte’s state visit to China in October 2016, the Narcotics Control Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security of the People’s Republic of China and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency signed a Protocol on Cooperation to deal with drug-related crimes between our two countries.
The NCB and the PDEA agreed to conduct and enhance cooperation in information sharing, data exchange, drug-related criminal investigations, repatriation of drug criminals, providing the Philippines anti-drug technical equipment. Since October 2016, around 200 trainees from the related Philippine law enforcement agencies such as PNP, NBI and PDEA have attended more than 20 training programs held in China.
China’s success in cooperative efforts with other countries has been brought to my attention as the most recent case of mainstream media misinformation (or disinformation) headlined a terribly wrong item.
As such, it is rather unfortunate for media outfits, just to sensationalize a news item, to apply a malicious spin on something which could have created an irreparable damaged on the country’s relationship with China.