PB supports anti-child porn campaign

CEBU, Philippines - The Cebu Provincial Board is supporting the Terre Des Hommes and other Cebu-based non-government organizations’ upcoming launching of its anti-child pornography campaign.

The Terre des Hommes, an international children’s arc organization based in the Netherlands, in collaboration with Cebu-based NGOs namely Bidlisiw Foundation Inc., the Children’s Legal Bureau (CLB), and the Fellowship for Organizing Endeavors, Inc. (FORGE), will be launching on Saturday a public awareness and fundraising campaign against cyber child pornography in Cebu from July 14 to August 1.

The campaign dubbed as “Batok sa Cybersex: Cebu-Wide Day to End Child Pornography” is primarily intended to instill public awareness of the prevailing and persistent phenomenon of the modern crime of cyber pornography which has become rampant in Cebu.

A resolution was passed by the provincial board supporting the undertaking. The resolution identified the areas in the sixth district of Cebu as among the places in the country where cyber child pornography is rapidly spreading.

Children as young as seven years old are working daily “from home”, like posing nude and performing sexual acts in front of the web cams, earning at least P300 daily.

In fact the statistics show that in the Philippines, about 100,000 children have fallen victims of sexual exploitation not only on the streets and prostitution houses but more so via internet as stated in the resolution.

“This vicious social malady that pierces the vulnerability of our innocent and vulnerable children has to end if we have to spare society’s moral foundation and fiber. What is urgently and seriously needed is a unified and concerted effort among all sectors of society in fighting against this modern electronic felony,” the resolution stated.

The anti-child pornography campaign will kick off with a forum on Saturday at the Parkmall. It is expected to gather local government officials, students, school officials, businessmen, civil society workers, legal luminaries, and leaders of churches and faith-based groups.

The campaign is the local expression of Terre des Hommes’ project which is Redirect, the campaign which originally took off from the Netherlands aiming that for every donation received from the Dutch public against child porn, an arrow artwork is placed in strategic parts of the street until it forms a symbolic route redirecting the children from an area of prostitution and exploitation to a Terre des Hommes shelter for children. — (FREEMAN)