FACT CHECK: Photos of Sara Duterte visiting MILF camp ahead of 2026 polls are fake

‘Based on what we have, she did not visit the region recently,’ the Police Regional Office Bangsamoro Autonomous Region told Rappler in a text message

AT A GLANCE

• The claim that Vice President Sara Duterte visited a Moro Islamic Liberation Front camp and was received by Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces fighters is rated as false.
• There is no evidence or official record of such a visit, and local police confirmed that they had no information about it.
• The photos circulating with the claim are likely AI-generated, and the claim emerged during the final days of campaigning for the BARMM parliamentary elections.

This is AI-generated. Read the article for full context. Report any errors.

Claim: Vice President Sara Duterte visited a camp of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and was warmly received by Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces (BIAF) fighters.

Rating: FALSE

Why we fact-checked this: The claim began spreading on Facebook as early as September 8, using supposed photos of the Vice President surrounded by alleged BIAF fighters. The photos are also circulating on TikTok, Reddit, YouTube, and Instagram. 

The most popular post came from a page using the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces name. It drew roughly 4,000 comments and 5,000 shares.

Its caption read: “Sa pagkakaalam ko, mas mataas ang respeto ng mga MILF kay VP Sara kaysa sa AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) at PNP (Philippine National Police)… hindi raw siya safe sa lahat ng mga nakapaligid sa kanya.”

(As far as I know, the MILF has more respect for VP Sara than the AFP and PNP… she’s reportedly not safe around everyone surrounding her.)

There are multiple versions of the claim using the same photos. Some of them placed the alleged visit at Camp Darapanan, MILF’s main base in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao del Norte. 

The facts: The Police Regional Office Bangsamoro Autonomous Region told Rappler in a text message on Friday, September 11, that they received no coordination or information about any recent visit of Duterte to the Bangsomoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). 

“Based on what we have, she did not visit the region recently,” they said.

There is also no public record of the supposed visit on the Office of the Vice President (OVP)’s official Facebook page, its regional OVP satellite offices, Duterte’s own Facebook account, the Bangsamoro Government’s official Facebook page, or Luwaran, the MILF Central Committee’s official information website.

The Bangsamoro Government has separately warned the public about fake pages impersonating official Bangsamoro channels.

Camp Darapanan, where the visit supposedly happened, is also the site of former president Rodrigo Duterte’s real, documented 2016 visit with MILF leaders, also reported on Luwaran.

AI-generated photos, suspicious pages: Artificial intelligence detection tools Hive Moderation and Image Whisperer flagged both photos as likely to be AI-generated (84% and 91%, and high spatial frequency variance in the tactical gear and crowd, respectively). 

Reverse image searches found no exact match for either of the two viral photos. However, the closest visual match found is from Duterte’s June 2026 visit to Nunungan, Lanao del Norte, for the 60th Araw ng Nunungan celebration. 

A frame from video coverage of the same visit, at the 0:33 mark, closely resembles the framing used in the modified viral photo, suggesting the fake images were likely edited from this real footage.  

Pages spreading the claim — such as the one using the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces name — were created on September 5, just four days before the claim began circulating.

Securing the elections: This claim surfaced in the final days of campaigning for the first-ever BARMM parliamentary elections to be held on Monday, September 14. The event marks a historic milestone in the region’s transition from the 2014 peace agreement between the Philippine government and the MILF to a functioning parliamentary system. (LIVE UPDATES: First BARMM parliamentary elections)

Debunked: Rappler has previously debunked other false claims involving BARMM officials and the upcoming elections:

• FACT CHECK: News of 39 soldiers held by MILF is from 2023, not recent 
• FACT CHECK: No Turkish police deployed to secure BARMM polls
• FACT CHECK: No reports of MNLF, MILF plot vs Marcos gov’t over Duterte arrest
• FACT CHECK: BARMM official’s ‘hate quote’ after MSU bombing is fake

– James Bones/Rappler.com

James Bones is a Research and Data volunteer at Rappler. He is a fourth-year Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering student at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines – Manila.

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