<![CDATA[Coronavirus, South China Sea politics fuel anti-Chinese sentiment in the Philippines]>
Manila universities ordering Chinese students to quarantine themselves; crematoriums refusing to accept the body of a Chinese coronavirus victim; taxi drivers reportedly turning down passengers who look Chinese. Although there are just three confirmed cases in the Philippines, coronavirus fears are already threatening to become what some scholars call an "epidemic of racism".
"When there are gaps in scientific knowledge " cliche and prejudice fill the void," noted a blog post by scholars Jonathan Corpus Ong and Gideon Lasco.
The situation is complicated because the Philippine government has two different problems: the virus, and the racist backlash arising from the fact the virus originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Making things worse, critics of President Rodrigo Duterte's administration see the coronavirus as an opportunity to flay the government for its perceived cosiness with Beijing.
"There is a lot of hateful and racist speech in Philippine social media right now, and what's heartbreaking is that rather than calling it out as such, many academics and even journalists in the country have actually justified this speech as a form of political resistance " a kind of 'weapon of the weak' against the Chinese government," said Ong, an associate professor of global digital media at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Michael "Xiao" Chua, a history professor at Manila's De La Salle University, describes himself as "a historian with fourth-generation Chinese blood". "I haven't felt any stigma yet, not in school or office, the stigma is really with Chinese nationals," he said.
"I feel it more in social media, some people mixing their anti-Duterte feelings with existing resentment over the West Philippine Sea issues," Chua said, referring to Beijing and Manila's overlapping claims in the South China Sea. "I am not saying there is no discrimination but I think some on both sides are overhyping the issue to pursue their political agenda."
Dr Henry Lim Bon Liong, president of the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry, last week warned that "spreading fake news and racist, xenophobic messages can be more dangerous than the virus itself due to their negative effects of causing confusion, fear, rancour and instability".
But this has not stopped Filipinos from avidly sharing videos supposedly showing people in Wuhan collapsing and dying in the streets. On Friday, a radio station's tweet referred to the sickness as "the China virus", while Filipinos have also gleefully reposted photos of Chinese tourists allegedly defecating in public.
"These offensive jokes and memes, making fun of supposedly Chinese people pooping in public through decontextualised photographs, are incredibly harmful and inflict lasting damage to multicultural relations," Ong said.
Adamson University in Manila last week issued a memo requiring Chinese students to quarantine themselves until February 14, and telling Chinese citizens to "postpone all transactions" with the institution. Upon being criticised, the university edited its directive the next day to include all students and staff who had travelled to countries affected by the virus.
On Thursday, health secretary Francisco Duque said several funeral parlours had refused to cremate the remains of the first coronavirus fatality, a 44-year-old Chinese man from Wuhan.
"Those who agreed backed out," he said in Tagalog. "There's no other basis than their fear based on what they saw on social media, which is what they deemed the truth. Our job is hard enough, it's made more difficult because the disinformation virus spreads faster [than the coronavirus]."
With much of the xenophobia being fuelled by fake news, authorities have said they would go after anyone spreading hoaxes about the virus, but it remains unclear how they will do it and what law they will use.
Justice secretary Menardo Guevarra on Tuesday ordered the National Bureau of Investigation to investigate, build cases and "if evidence warrants, to file appropriate charges" against persons spreading misinformation " but a justice official has admitted there is no law covering fake news.
On Wednesday, the Philippine National Police (PNP) said it would file cases using Presidential Decree 90, which bans "rumour-mongering" " only for it to be pointed out that the decree, an infamous tool used by dictator Ferdinand Marcos to repress critics, was repealed in 1986. The police then said they would use a provision of the Anti-Cybercrime Law.
Ong from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who has published research on disinformation, fake news and the Duterte government, said he believed the responsibility to promote proper and ethical communication lay less with the government and more with academics, journalists and platforms.
"On one hand the Philippine government using arrests could curb some conspiracy theory or hate speech from spreading, but on the other hand this could easily slip into political opportunism," he said.
A man and a child wear protective masks in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. Photo: AP alt=A man and a child wear protective masks in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. Photo: AP
"The main lesson that various fake news laws around Asia has taught me as a researcher is that these laws only provide the legal justification for the incumbent to attack their political opponents and create chilling effects. Fake news laws in Asia are rarely applied with a sense of fairness as they primarily aim to silence dissent."
The PNP said it would leave monitoring of fake news to the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO), an office that does not enjoy high public regard. It recently tried promoting "Duterte's legacy" via a list of alleged accomplishments that it could not substantiate.
Nor have the police explained how they would react if somebody reported a Philippine senator as a source of fake news. In a hearing earlier this week, Senator Vicente Sotto presented a 10-minute conspiracy video supposedly showing the coronavirus was an American "bioweapon" intended to weaken China. In response, foreign secretary Teodoro Locsin said: "This is an example of the craziest video I've even seen."
There have also been mixed messages from the president. While Duterte said earlier in the week that "there is nothing to be scared of that coronavirus thing", he wore a portable air purifier at a press conference and audience members were told beforehand not to touch him.
At a subsequent event with the president, reporters were asked to fill up a health declaration form that asked, among other things, if the respondent had been sick in the past 30 days or had been in close contact with farm animals. The form threatened "serious consequences" for falsified answers.
The Presidential Security Group has also recommended the indefinite suspension of public tours of the presidential palace.
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This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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