A circulating quote card where actress and TV host Kris Aquino said Filipinos are indebted to her father, the late senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., for the freedom they currently enjoy is fake.
Posted by a Facebook (FB) user on March 24, the fabricated graphic featured an image of the younger Aquino next to the statement: “UTANG NINYO SA AKING AMA ANG KALAYAAN NA TINATAMASA NINYO NGAUN (You owe my father the freedom you enjoy today).”
Another version of the quote card used a different image but carried the same statement.
The quote is similar to a remark Kris Aquino made over four years ago but the quote card that has drawn thousands of reactions is not hers.
In a November 2017 Instagram post commemorating her father’s birthday, Aquino uploaded a portion of an interview the opposition leader gave during the Marcos-era martial law. A part of her post read:
“Try as you may, #fakenews folks- you cannot rewrite history. And the truth is you do owe this man the fact that you have FREEDOM OF SPEECH, FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION & FREEDOM OF THE PRESS TODAY- because he had the balls to actually DIE for his country.”
Screenshot of Kris Aquino’s Instagram post, taken by VERA Files Fact Check.
On Aug. 21, 1983, when Aquino returned to the Philippines after three years of self-imposed exile in the United States, he was shot in the head while being escorted by soldiers out of the plane. His assassination galvanized the opposition that rallied behind his widow, Corazon Aquino, who challenged Ferdinand Marcos in the 1986 snap elections.
Protests surrounding the election results and the defection of a section of the military led to the EDSA People Power Revolution that ended Marcos’ 20-year-rule.
The quote card emerged a day after Aquino defied her doctors’ advice to stay home and instead attended Vice President Leni Robredo’s Tarlac rally to publicly endorse her presidential bid.
The netizen’s post has since garnered more than 34,000 reactions, 940 comments and 44,000 shares. The quote card was also published by at least 50 FB groups and pages and has received more than 43,320 interactions collectively, according to social media monitoring tool CrowdTangle. Meanwhile, the other version of the graphic, posted by a different netizen on March 26, has gotten more than 140,000 shares as of writing.
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(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
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