HOAX: ‘US diplomat’ says Balangiga Bells were returned ‘because of Duterte’

Claim: Daniel Russel, a United States diplomat, said the Balangiga Bells were returned from the US to the Philippines because of President Rodrigo Duterte.

The blog insiderph.com posted the claim on their website Tuesday, December 11. Since then, the post has been shared 11 times to different Facebook pages and groups. All of these accounted for a combined total of at least 15,000 interactions. The page and groups used to circulate this claim have a total of two million followers.

The claim was also posted by blog bayangpilipinas.com and Facebook users Peña L. Don and Sicnarf Escolano Latop, which he posted to a public group, “Active Social Media Commentators of the Philippines.”

This claim was sent by a number of readers to Rappler for verification.

Rating: FALSE

The facts: There is no such quote from Russel. Duterte himself said no one should take credit for the return of the bells.

“The return of the bells [was] upon the demand of the Filipino people,” Duterte said on December 13. He also said that “nobody but nobody” should take credit for the successful return of the Balangiga Bells.

Earlier, Malacañang Palace said on December 11 that it was President Rodrigo Duterte’s political will that made the return of the bells possible. Former Special Presidential Assistant Christopher “Bong” Go also said it was Duterte’s effort, but “he is not taking credit for it.”

The US embassy also shared the sentiment.

As quoted in a December 10 GMA News report, US embassy spokesperson Molly Koscina said the bells were returned “not due to any particular event or statement.”

“There are a number of presidents, a number of secretaries [of Defense], a number of US and Philippine ambassadors who worked for the return of the Balangiga bells. It was decades worth of work and protest from the veterans, and the legal issues that came with it,” said Koscina.

Rappler contacted Russel’s organization, Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI), to confirm if he did say what was attributed to him. ASPI has yet to provide a reply.

Even if true, Russel’s supposed statement would not have official bearing since he is no longer a diplomat or State official, as confirmed by Koscina to Rappler via email.

According to his profile page on the website of ASPI, Russel (not Russell as the blog and Facebook post spelled it) is currently the vice president for international security and diplomacy of ASPI. He was Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in the US Department of State from July 2013 to March 2017.

There have also been no news reports about Russel’s supposed statement.

Meanwhile, the posts on insiderph.com and bayangpilipinas.com (which cites the former blog as its source) copied most of their text content from a December 11 ABS-CBN News report without acknowledgment or citation. The last two paragraphs, which were not in the ABS-CBN News report, read:

Furthermore, US Diplomat Daniel Russell has stated (off-record) that the bells were returned because of Pres. Duterte’s strategy in geopolitics that made the US grant Duterte’s request of returning the Balangiga Bells.

“We returned the Balangiga Bells because of Pres. Duterte”, Russell said.

These two paragraphs were the caption of Sicnarf Escolano Latop’s post on Facebook while Peña L. Don’s post’s caption attacked ABS-CBN, liberals, and “leakers of fake news.”

The photo used by the posts come from a different context, far from the return of the Balangiga bells. The first photo is a flipped photo of Russel speaking in the Foreign Press Center in Washington on February 4, 2014. The second one is him in a media interview at the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs on October 24, 2016.

Russel had commented about Duterte in the past. In October 2016, the then top diplomat for East Asia said Duterte’s anti-US remarks were “hurtful and mystifying.” Duterte immediately countered what he said.

Given Duterte’s drift towards China, Russel also warned Duterte against choosing between the United States and China.

The Balangiga Bells were 3 bells taken by the United States military from the Church of San Lorenzo de Martir in Balangiga, Eastern Samar in 1901 during the Philippine-American war. After 117 years, the US returned the bells to the Philippines on December 11. (READ: FAST FACTS: Balangiga Massacre)

The blog insiderph.com is similar to other blogs Rappler has checked. It does not declare its editorial board, contact details, company profile, and does not show the full names of authors in bylines. Its content is mostly pro-administration and anti-opposition.

According to a whois lookup on ICANN, the insiderph.com is a fairly new site, created on September 21, 2018. – Miguel Imperial/Rappler.com

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