Journalist Cong Corrales (middle) was joined by his lawyers in filing a case against Meta in May 2023 for its alleged failure to observe his data subject rights. Photo from the press release of the Movement Against Disinformation. Fair use.
This article is part of a series produced by IFEX, the global network defending and promoting freedom of expression, on the impact of the silence and inaction of Big Tech about the misuse of their platforms in amplifying attacks targeting journalists.
The Higaonon are an Indigenous group based in the mountainous regions of northern and central Mindanao, in the Philippines. They face serious challenges, notably the encroachment of mining and logging operations in their ancestral territories. In 2019, after Leonardo Vicente “Cong” Corrales wrote about the plight of Higaonon evacuees fleeing from military clashes in their communities, he found himself included in a poster of individuals tagged as alleged members of the Communist Party of the Philippines in Cagayan de Oro, which is designated by the Philippine government as a terrorist group. The producers of the poster, which circulated widely online, remained anonymous.
This is “red-tagging” — the practice of linking individuals and groups to the Communist Party and its armed wing. During Duterte’s presidency, red-tagging was used to target critics, journalists, scholars, the opposition, and human rights defenders. Professional journalists are mainly red-tagged by unknown perpetrators on social media platforms.
Read more: What is red-tagging and why is it dangerous in the Philippines?
Despite authorities’ insistence that there’s no such thing as red-tagging, an important Supreme Court ruling in 2024 described it as a threat to life and liberty. The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) recently produced a study that showed that 60 percent of red-tagging incidents between 2016 and 2024 were perpetrated by state forces, particularly members of the police and military.
Sometimes the threats against Corrales were even more direct. In 2020, after expressing support for ABS-CBN, the country’s largest media broadcaster, which was forced to shut down after its franchise was not renewed (by a Congress dominated by allies of former President Rodrigo Duterte), he returned to the station to find a wreath had been placed there, with his name and the names of other journalists on it.
In 2021, after writing an article about a community pantry, Corrales was once again red-tagged by anonymous Facebook accounts spreading a photo of him carrying a gun and implying that he is an armed communist rebel. The gun was actually a toy used in a safety training seminar for journalists.
In 2023, a doxxing operation added fuel to the fire. An anonymous Facebook account uploaded information sheets of Corrales and another journalist extracted from a city government’s housing agency. The intent was to condemn critical journalists like Corrales for availing themselves of government services like socialized housing, implying that citizens should lose this right when they criticize authorities.