Depok, Indonesia: Indonesian kidnappers and child traffickers are using Facebook and other social media to 27 of the 129 children reported missing to Indonesia’s National Commission for Child Protection are believed to have been abducted after meeting their captors on Facebook.
“Maybe Indonesia is kind of a unique country so far. Once the reports start coming in, you will know that maybe it’s not one of the countries, maybe it’s one of a hundred countries,” said Anjan Bose, a programme officer who works on child online protection issues at ECPAT International.
“The Internet is such a global medium. It doesn’t differentiate between poor and rich. It doesn’t differentiate between the economy of the country or the culture,” The Associated Press quoted Bose as saying.
As many as 50 million Indonesian use Facebook, making the country one of the world’s top users after the United States.
Most people are either unaware of do not use privacy setting, allowing everyone to find them on the Internet and know everything about them.
“We are racing against time, and the technology frenzy over Facebook is a trend among teenagers here,” said Arist Merdeka Sirait, chairman of National Commission for Child Protection.
“Police should move faster, or many more girls will become victims.”
Facebook says its investigators regularly review content on the site and work with authorities, including Interpol, to combat illegal activity. It also has employees around the world tasked with cracking down on people who attempt to use the site for human trafficking .
“We take human trafficking very seriously and, while this behavior is not common on Facebook, a number of measures are in place to counter this activity,” spokesman Andrew Noyes said in an email.
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