BANGKOK—Of late, Indonesia's police have put those operating child pornography websites on notice: they will be tracked down. The authorities were pushed to such action after revelations from U.S. officials in August about an Indonesian link to one of the world's largest commercial child pornography networks.
In Japan, the police have a clearer picture about the Internet serving as a lynchpin for paedophile networks. The National Police Agency says almost 50 of the 319 internet crimes logged in the first half of this year involved "buying sex with minors."
These are but two examples of how Asian countries are coming to terms with the darker side of the Internet as a medium assisting those driven to sexual abuse of children. There are now more than 2,000 paedophile sites located in many countries across the world containing "paedophile material or promoting sex-related tourism," says a study by an anti-paedophile organisation in Italy.
"There are actually two related issues with the Internet: the first is the distribution of pornographic materials of children; the other is online solicitation of children by paedophiles," says Brenda Platt, spokesperson for the Bangkok-based ECPAT International, a child rights group lobbying to end child prostitution and child trafficking.
South and East Asia societies cannot ignore the fact that it is their children who are appearing in the recent production of child pornography, according to an ECPAT study on children and the Internet. "There are questions about where visual child pornography is being produced. Common belief is that many images are decades old and the recent pictures are produced in South and East Asia," the study reveals.
"Child pornography has turned to the Internet as a medium where paedophiles and pimps contact each other, exchange information on bulletin boards about their sexual interest in children, post links to teen porn sites and pass around photos in newsgroups," writes Alecks Pabico, of the Philippine Centre for Investigative Journalism, in a paper presented at a seminar last August.
Anilkumar Samtani, assistant professor at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, says children unwittingly contribute to the violation of their own privacy when participating in on-line communication. "The Internet can be and has been used to entice children to join groups of dubious origins or with questionable aims," states Samtani, in a paper presented at the Bangkok seminar on 'The Impact on Children of the Internet and New Media'.
"Quite apart from the solicitation of children into child pornography, the availability of pornographic material that can be accessed by children can also be viewed as a transgression on the rights of children," he adds.
However, Pabico admits, monitoring child pornography is difficult. Then there are other obstacles, such as the inadequacy of media reporting on crimes against children in cyber-space and political apathy. For Pabico, lack of media coverage will result in further child abuse. "Unreported, violations against the rights of children will only continue unabated.
But to achieve decisive results, Samtani underscores the need for an international response given the global nature of Internet. "The effective investigation and successful prosecution of those who make child pornography available on the Internet require international collaboration. Since the technology used is global, the response must be global."
