Pro-Duterte pages use AI to recast drug war victims' kin as rich

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February 26, 2026 | 7:00am

MANILA, Philippines — More than two dozen pro-Duterte Facebook pages spread a doctored photo of drug war victims' kin carrying designer handbags with near-identical captions in just half a day — timed with the halfway mark of the International Criminal Court's confirmation of charges hearing for former president Rodrigo Duterte.

The image — which bears the hallmarks of being fabricated through AI tools — showed Rubilyn Litao of the group Rise Up for Life and for Rights, and Llore Pasco and Sheerah Escudero, relatives of those killed in the drug war, holding what seem like Louis Vuitton and Moynat bags.

The original photo was taken by ONE News anchor Angela Lagunzad-Castro and uploaded by ONE News on Facebook on February 22. It shows the same three women standing together at a press conference in The Hague. They are not carrying anything.

A Philstar.com review of the image's spread found that the earliest post went up at around 5:21 a.m. on Wednesday, February 25 from the page of Cathy Binag, a pro-Duterte social media personality with 296,000 followers. By 4 p.m. the same day, Binag's post alone had been shared over 27,000 times.

That translates to roughly 2,700 shares per hour, or about 45 shares per minute on average.

The post tagged at least seven other accounts, including fellow Duterte supporter Tio Moreno. Within hours, the same image — often with Binag's caption copied word for word — appeared across pages including Voc Populi PH, Kitty Duterte Unofficial, Sass Sasot, DJ Surdo Salanap, and Archlight News. 

A cursory Facebook search turned up more than two dozen posts carrying the same altered image. Many repeated the exact same caption, including the handbag's “identification and pricing” cost breakdown.

Why now? The doctored photo went up early Wednesday, hours after ICC prosecution and trial lawyer Edward Jeremy told the court that Duterte's drug war deliberately targeted the poor "because they were the ones least likely to file complaints against the police," among other evidence that the violence was intentional and systematic. It was also uploaded and amplified a day before Duterte's defense team is scheduled to present its full-day rebuttal on Thursday, February 26.

The four-day hearing — held on February 23, 24, 26, and 27 — will determine whether there are substantial grounds to proceed to a full trial. The prosecution and victims' lawyers presented their case on the first two days. Thursday is reserved entirely for the defense. Closing statements from all sides are set for Friday.

Pushed beyond political circles

Several accounts reposted it into Facebook groups with no connection to the ICC or to politics at all. One account, "Cherymar Languita," posted it to a Shopee, TikTok and Lazada shopping deals group. 

Another user, "Judith Valenzuela Barlaan," shared the same fake image on the "DepED Teachers' Tambayan" Facebook group, for public school teachers.

Mockery, synchronized comments

The three women were subject to mockery in the comments section of the posts that gained the most traction, particularly that of Cathy Binag's.

The dominant word was paldo — Visayan slang for someone who has suddenly gotten rich. It appeared in comment after comment, across pages and accounts that otherwise have no obvious connection to each other.

Other comments were in the same vein: that the women were "nepo babies" of the drug war, that they were paid off, that their trip to The Hague was a vacation funded by taxpayers "Palakpakan ang ating bagong nepo babies," one widely reacted-to comment read. "Nang dahil sa EJK nakapag-Europe kami!" (Applause for our new nepo babies. Because of EJK, we got to go to Europe!)

'She borrowed my clothes'

Human rights lawyer Maria Sol Taule posted the original unedited photo and called out the fabrication. She also shared a screenshot of a private exchange with Escudero, who had thanked her for lending clothes for the trip.

"Sheerah borrowed my clothes. I lent her my things for her trip because the weather is cold," Taule wrote. "Stop editing her photos."

Taule said the families had no means to fly to the Netherlands on their own. Advocates and supporters pooled money to cover their travel.

ICC-accredited assistant to counsel Kristina Conti also called out the photo as disinformation. "The photo is intended to convince the public that the victims' families have been paid off," Conti said. "They are not, and never have been."

Not the first time

The doctored handbag image is not the first fabricated content to target drug war victims' families during the ICC proceedings.

Another altered image circulated online that was manipulated to make it appear that Ephraim Escudero — Sheerah's 18-year-old brother, who was found dead in Pampanga in 2017 with his hands bound and head wrapped in tape — was alive and simply working abroad. 

— with research by Janelle Liong and Martin Ramos