DAVAO CITY (PHILIPPINES)
Benar News [Washington, DC]
July 7, 2023
By Jeoffrey Maitem and Jojo Riñoza
YouTube has banned channels belonging to Philippine megachurch pastor Apollo Quiboloy, who the United States sanctioned for alleged sex abuse and is an ally of former President Rodrigo Duterte.
The online video sharing platform took down the channels of Quiboloy’s Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KOJC) and one of its programs as well as of Sonshine Media Network International (SMNI), a television channel he also owns, YouTube’s parent company Google confirmed on Friday.
“Google is committed to compliance with applicable U.S. sanctions and enforces related policies under its Terms of Service,” Google said in a statement to reporters. “After review and consistent with these policies, we terminated the Laban Kasama ang Bayan, KOJC and SMNI YouTube channels.”
SMNI’s YouTube channel now shows a tag that says “This account has been terminated for a violation of YouTube’s Terms of Service.”
The Laban Kasama ang Bayan (Fight with the people) program has accused people who were against Duterte of being communist sympathizers.
Quiboloy is the founder and executive pastor of KOJC, which claims to have 6 million followers worldwide. In December 2022, the U.S. Treasury announced sanctions against Quiboloy.
The department accused Quiboloy of using his position to rape women and girls in his congregation for more than a decade “including a pattern of systemic and pervasive rape of girls as young as 11 years old, as well as other physical abuse.”
Young women “were directed to have ‘night duty,’ which required them to have sexual intercourse with Quiboloy on a determined schedule. Quiboloy kept pastorals in various countries, including the Philippines and the United States,” the Treasury Department alleged.
The self-proclaimed “appointed son of God” has been on the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Most Wanted list for sex trafficking, fraud, coercion and bulk cash smuggling, it said. No charges have been brought against him in the Philippines.
Months before he left office at the end of his term (2016-22), Duterte came out in support of Quiboloy, reminiscing about how he met the pastor at a small chapel in Agdao, a Davao district where communist New People’s Army guerrillas had fielded urban hit squads.
“When I ran for mayor, he asked me to speak – and I was the only politician in Davao that went to his church to speak. It was just a small church. There was no building, it was bare in 1988,” Duterte said.
Late last month, YouTube took down Quiboloy’s personal channel following a complaint from a Canadian content creator known online as Mutahar, citing the U.S. actions against the pastor.
Quiboloy dismissed that news in his SMNI program last week and issued a challenge to the U.S. government.
“To those who are attacking me and those who want to attack me, to all of you, even America, you all are now meddling, I dare you to reveal everything you have against me. I want to let you know, I am bulletproof. I am not affected by anything you do against me,” he said in Tagalog.
“You think I will cower and that my companions here will shy away from telling the truth. You are just emboldening us. It’s like pouring gasoline over our feelings and setting it ablaze because we see that what we are carrying is the truth and the Philippines is waking up,” he said.