As former Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest sparked protests in the Philippines, social media posts shared a video misrepresented as one of the rallies held by his supporters in Manila. Visual clues show the clip was filmed in Poland during a rally ahead of a general election in 2023.
“Duterte’s enthusiastic supporters in the streets of Manila,” reads the simplified Chinese caption of a protest video uploaded on Douyin on March 14, 2025 shared hundreds of times.
The clip repeats the same scene a few times with a voice-over in Mandarin that says “It is such a tragic joke that a fighter against narcotics was arrested by a so-called international court.
“As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China should use this opportunity to bring down hostile forces that confuse right and wrong.”
Duterte, the first Asian former head of state charged by the International Criminal Court (ICC), faces crimes against humanity charges over his years-long campaign against drug users and dealers that rights groups have said killed thousands (archived link).
His tenure as president was marked by a swing away from the nation’s former colonial master, the United States, in favour of China as he set aside rivalry with Beijing in the South China Sea dispute to court Chinese businesses (archived link).
China warned the ICC against “politicisation” and “double standards” after the 79-year-old’s arrest (archived link).
The video was also shared elsewhere on Douyin, Kuaishou, and WeChat.
Duterte’s supporters have staged protests in the Philippines and abroad including in the ICC in The Hague demanding his release, but the clip actually shows an unrelated rally in Warsaw, the Polish capital (archived links here, here and here).
Read the full story on AFP Fact Check.