Who is the “Filipino Monkey?”

Did you know that the term “Filipino Monkey” has become an internationally known name? The reason I’m asking this question and why we’re writing this piece is due to a CNN report I heard yesterday about that near shooting incident at the Straits of Hormuz last January 6 where Iranian speedboats were threatening US Navy ships patrolling nearby. Then a radio transmission was heard saying, “I’m coming at you, you will explode in a couple of minutes!” US Navy officials until today are puzzled as to who made that radio transmission.

I checked in Wikipedia about the Filipino Monkey and this is what was written: “The term ‘Filipino Monkey’ has come to describe a particular radio prankster (and his imitators in Maritime radio transmission). All ships at sea are required to monitor VHF marine channel 16, which is the International Emergency Distress Frequency for shipping and maritime purposes. The channel is meant only to be used for establishing contact, at which point the users are supposed to change to a different frequency. However, in certain areas of the world this frequency has been used by pranksters who listen in on the ship-to-ship traffic and then starts transmitting miscellaneous messages.”

So again the big question is, who is this Filipino monkey who apparently has been on the radio as a prankster for the last 25 years, making obscenities over maritime radio? In a press release, U S Navy Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead said, “Based on my experience operating in that part of the world, where there is a lot of maritime activity, trying to discern [who is speaking on the radio channel] is very hard to do.” Other Navy officials say that the transmission could have come from a shore location.

Whatever it is, the “Filipino Monkey” has become an internationally known name as a maritime radio prank, just like the name Kilroy, whose name and message “Kilroy was here!” was emblazoned in many walls, ships or junk during the Second World War. During our Citizen’s Band (CB) radio days, we too had our share of radio pranksters, which still happens today with the radios used by the Philippine National Police (PNP) or even CITOM.

What I gathered from that CNN report was that ships operating in the Middle East have to contend with the mysterious, but profane voice known as the “Filipino Monkey,” likely more than one person, who listens in our ship-to-ship radio transmission and then jumps in, shouting insults and jabbering vile epithets. Of course this sounds derogatory to us Filipinos, but then no one really knows who this prankster is. Perhaps some of the words he uses are Tagalog words a.k.a. Filipino, which is why he got the name “Filipino Monkey.”

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What did Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez had in mind when he threatened the media owners and press groups with criminal charges if they would allow their reporters, photographers or cameramen to “obstruct” an authorized police or military operation? This is obviously an off-shoot to that Keystone cop of a coup that Sen. Antonio Trillanes staged at the Manila Peninsula where there were more media personnel inside the Manila Penn lobby than there were coup plotters!

According to that news report, Sec. Gonzalez said, “Media owners and press organizations may incur criminal liabilities if their reporters, photographers and cameramen will disobey lawful orders from duly authorized government officers and personnel during emergencies and that such disobedience may lead to collateral damage to [property] and civilian casualties in case of an authorized police or military operations.”

When this story came out of the press, Pres. Roy Mabasa of the National Press Club issued this statement: “This is the exact meaning of chilling effect. This has now become a policy of the government for it is now in black and white. This means that they are ready to crack down on the media,”

When this issue exploded to the public consciousness most of our Cebuano journalists didn’t feel threatened by the statement of the DOJ Secretary and I’m sure that they haven’t changed their minds on this yet. A week after the Manila Penn incident, there was a meeting called by the Arroyo Government with the media in order to set guidelines as to what common grounds they could both work with to prevent future incidents. But the media refused to come up with any common guidelines.

So now that the DOJ has issued its own guidelines, media only have themselves to blame as they didn’t participate in making those guidelines. When the PNP or military are doing certain operations, media should not be the stumbling block that could obstruct their work. Our duty is to report the news, not create the news or worse, work with coup plotters to get an exclusive report.

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