A network of 33 community media organizations across the country has condemned what it described as “censorship” and “state-sponsored attacks on free expression” after authorities assigned an X rating to a documentary about missing activist Jonas Burgos.
The Altermidya Network said that the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board’s (MTRCB) X-rating of ‘Alipato at Muog’ “is detrimental to the truth the film reveals about the Jonas Burgos case.”
The network accused the MTRCB of preventing the public from accessing facts and firsthand narratives of victims of enforced disappearance. “With this rating, it seems the MTRCB also wants the stories of desaparecidos to disappear,” it said.
The MTRCB justified the X rating for ‘Alipato at Muog’ by saying it “tends to undermine the faith and confidence of the people in their government and/or duly constituted authorities.”
JL Burgos, the director of the film, is the brother of Jonas Burgos, an activist and farmer who was abducted by armed individuals claiming to be police officers on April 28, 2007.
Jonas is one of the five children of staunch press freedom advocates Joe Burgos and Edita Burgos.
The film portrays the Burgos family’s 17-year search for Jonas and reveals information about the case that had previously not been made public.
The MTRCB issued the rating a few days after the National Security Agency labeled the documentary as a “desperate attempt to revive an old case linking the military to the disappearance of Jonas Burgos.”
Altermidya Network has demanded that the MTRCB rescind the X rating given to ‘Alipato at Muog’ and make it available to the general public.
“The truth of the matter is that the MTRCB wants to censor the truth that the military has committed condemnable acts that violate the rights and liberties of the common Filipino,” the network said.
Note: Mark Z. Saludes, editor at LiCAS News, is also a member of the production team for the documentary Alipato at Muog.
