Disturbing discovery: The Budak2 Sekolah Rendah group on Facebook, which features photos of schoolchildren, is said to have over 12,000 followers. — 123rf
IT’S a wake-up call for all of us. Not just parents, teachers and students but every one of us – we need to be vigilant to confront online sex predators, including paedophiles.
The recent expose by social media influencer Wee Yun Nee of a Facebook group that uses photographs of schoolchildren is most commendable.
Wee, also known as Mekyun, has taken the trouble to lodge police reports beyond just highlighting the issue after she found her pictures, from when she was younger, being used.
The group, called Budak2 Sekolah Rendah (Primary School Children), is said to have over 12,000 followers, and that is very disturbing.
We do not know how many of these followers are actually unknowing school kids or adults but the group sure attracted the attention of mental sickos with paedophilic tendencies.
It is said to have started as an undercover “community” disguised as a nostalgic forum for sharing memories of school life.
Eventually, it grew into something far more insidious as a gathering place for adults using coded language and imagery to indulge in paedophilic behaviour.
Rightly, it has been shut down by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC).
Mekyun shared some of the lewd comments brazenly posted on Facebook and it was clear that there are predators out there who get sexually aroused just by ogling children, mostly in tudung and baju kurung school uniforms.
Wee, also known as Mekyun, has taken the trouble to lodge police reports beyond just highlighting the issue after she found her pictures, from when she was younger, being used.
These perverts openly expressed their sexual desires; about what they wished to do with these children and fetishising school uniforms. They were also said to be using coded language that’s common among paedophile networks.
It was clear that these degenerates treated the Facebook page as a digital playground to exploit children and sexualise the school environment. The pictures of the unknowing children were posted on the account by these degenerates.
Closing down the page is not enough. Every effort must be made by MCMC and the police to trace and hunt down the account holders who have posted nauseating comments. Some of these accounts have profile pictures, real or otherwise.
They should be publicly shamed for their actions, even if they are the average father and uncle. We must adopt zero tolerance for this.
Sinar Harian quoted a Twitter user as saying that these culprits should be reported to their wives with screenshot evidence of their husbands’ – or grandfathers’ – comments. They must be held accountable.
Mekyun showed screenshots of these indecent comments to prove the shocking behaviour of these deviants.
In Malaysia, such offences may fall under Sections 292 and 292A of the Penal Code, relating to the dissemination of obscene material and the sexual exploitation of children. Offenders could face lengthy prison sentences and mandatory registration as sex offenders.
In a country still grappling with rising online threats to children, the exposure of Budak2 Sekolah Rendah serves as a chilling reminder of the need for vigilance, policy reform, and zero tolerance toward those who exploit the most vulnerable members of society.
The fight against these online predators is an ongoing one. In fact, last year, the MCMC and police launched “Op Pedo” to track down individuals who possess, store, and distribute pornographic and child abuse materials (CSAM).
Raids were conducted across six states and territories, namely Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Johor, Terengganu, Penang, and Perak. The ages of those arrested ranged from 20 to 74 with some suspects admitting to finding and buying explicit content via social media and messaging platforms such as X and Telegram.
The New Straits Times quoted Bukit Aman’s D11 principal assistant director Senior Assistant Commissioner Siti Kamsiah Hassan as saying that “access to such pornography has made predators even more brazen, with some going to the extent of attempting to abduct children.”
According to the 2022 “ICT Use and Access by Individuals and Households Survey Report” released by the Statistics Depart-ment in May 2023, “Households with Internet access increased to 96% in 2022 compared with 94.9% in 2021”.
And, as reported by the Focus news portal, in 2018, the number of IP addresses linked to sex crimes spiked up to 2,660 and it kept increasing dramatically afterwards – escalating to 48,752 IP addresses in 2021.
“In total, there were 93,368 IP addresses detected engaging in cyberpaedophilia activities until the first quarter of 2022,’’ it said.
Communications Minister Datuk Fahmi Fadzil had reprimanded Meta (which owns Facebook) for its continued failure to curb paedophilia and sexual grooming on Facebook, saying this was one example why the social media licence was needed – to curb crimes, including sexual crimes against children.
It is not an infringement of the media’s freedom or of the right to privacy as some naively believe.
Meta has made plenty of promises to have strong moderation and strict policies to protect minors but these haven’t been effective.
It is probably even harder to track down the offenders in non-English speaking countries; in Malaysia, Bahasa Malaysia is widely used on social media platforms. It is not just a moderation failure but a systemic failure.
Fighting these shady manipulative characters is not just the work of the enforcement agencies, it is a public responsibility.
All of us need to speak up against such behaviour.
The clampdown on Budak2 Sekolah Rendah should not be an isolated case. We must never allow similar groups to crop up again.
