NEW INITIATIVE: Women, Family and Community Development Ministry’s task force to lead effort to tackle cyberbullying, extortion and child pornography
KUALA LUMPUR: A TASK force will draw up guidelines to prevent crimes against the young in cyberspace.
Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Rohani Abdul Karim said the ministry viewed the matter seriously and would work with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, non-governmental organisations and professionals to achieve this goal.
“Our children are very exposed to danger in cyberspace, and crimes like cyberbullying, extortion and child pornography are rampant.”
Rohani said this after opening the Seventh Meeting of the Asean Commission on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children here yesterday.
She said the ministry’s deputy secretary general (strategic), Datuk Harjeet Singh, would head the task force to formulate the guidelines. The task force would look into creating a network comprising the authorities, parents and stakeholders.
She called on Asean countries to protect children and monitor their Internet use to prevent them from being cybercrime victims.
"Children are easy targets, especially with the borderless world of the Internet. Therefore, cooperation at an international level is key to handling this problem."
Harjeet said all aspects would be taken into account to protect children from cyberspace crime and abuses.
"We will have the guidelines up first and then organise advocacy programmes. It will be a consolidation of many aspects to protect children in cyberspace."
The three-day meeting will see delegates from 10 Asean countries deliberating and brainstorming to eliminate violence against women and children. A declaration from the meeting will be submitted to the Asean Summit in Brunei in October.
Globally, efforts have been taken to protect children from cyberspace exploitation and crimes, with guidelines, laws and harsh penalties for offenders being evoked and enforced.
Malaysia's plan to have a task force, for example, came just a day after British Prime Minister David Cameron announced that every household in the UK would have pornography blocked by their Internet provider, unless they chose to receive it.
BBC News reported that Cameron had warned of pornography and its "corroding" influence on childhood.
"I want to talk about the Internet, the impact it is having on the innocence of our children and how online pornography is corroding childhood.
"And how, in the darkest corners of the Internet, there are things going on that are a direct danger to our children, and that must be stamped out."
He said this was a way to protect children and their innocence.