FOLLOWING a complaint lodged by the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB/Board) handed down its decision to pull out the episodes of the political drama “Pine Gap” for showing a map of China’s nine-dash line and violating Philippine sovereignty.
After a thorough review, the Board ruled that certain episodes of “Pine Gap” are “unfit for public exhibition.”
The MTRCB also ordered the immediate pullout of relevant episodes by its provider, Netflix Inc, from its video streaming platform.
In its decision, the MTRCB underscored that “under a whole-of-nation approach, every instrumentality of the government, whenever presented with the opportunity, has the responsibility to counter China’s aggressive actions in the West Philippine Sea to assert the Philippines’ territorial integrity.”
It further noted that the portrayal of the illegal nine-dash line in Pine Gap is no accident, as it was consciously designed and calculated to specifically convey a message that China’s nine-dash line legitimately exists.
Such portrayal, it said, “is a crafty attempt to perpetuate and memorialize in the consciousness of the present generation of viewers and the generations to come the illegal nine-dash line. Using the medium of a motion picture is but China’s unconventional approach to gain an upper hand in the territorial conflict in the South China Sea/West Philippine Sea.”
The Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Monday that it expects Netflix to comply with the ruling.
Early this year, Netflix has removed the same Australian spy drama in Vietnam after it also raised eyebrows in the Southeast Asian country over its depiction of Chinese claims in the South China Sea.
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