Transcript
'AMINIASI KEFU: It's an emerging crime. From the data collected by international organisations or international service providers like Facebook and Interpol, there seems to to be an indication that there is child abuse material, explicit sexual images or videos where children are abused and they are being uploaded or shared from countries in the Pacific or though not to the same extent as other regions in the world. It is starting to emerge and now with having more access to the internet and more access to devices and speedier internet download times, there is a risk there and a threat there. We all know we have locally-bred pedophiles which have abused young children and now with these devices, there may be the new stage of their type of offending that they will commit in the region.
KORO VAKA'UTA: I do note that Tonga's looked or in the process of expanding its provisions to combat this sort of thing.
'AK: That is correct. With the assistance of the Australian government and the Australian Attorney-General's department, we have drafted legislation as our efforts in complying with the Budapest Convention or the Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime which Tonga has acceded to and is the only Pacific island country that has acceded to this international convention. The Budapest Convention is seen universally as the only convention there that can help guide countries to prepare themselves to combat cybercrime with legislation and also procedural powers for their law enforcement authorities and their capacity training and also international cooperation.
KV: What do you think is the big takeaway from this workshop, for the region and for Tonga?
'AK: There are four main ones. Obviously for our legislation to be updated. Secondly is capacity building. We have to put in all the resources for our law enforcement to train them and get them the right equipment and tools and procedural powers, they way they can see them and find electronic data and catch the accused. And thirdly is cooperation. Not only locally, through government agencies but also government and the private sector, the public. And finally, which is most important, because this is an emerging trend, a risk that is emerging for the community, is community awareness and teaching people, parents especially, and the children how to wisely and responsibly use online devices. We have heard from the member countries that there are already cases here of revenge porn where relationships have gone sour and the angry partner has decided to upload personal and private photos which is quite new to law enforcement. But the main takeaway is that online child abuse is already here in the Pacific. There is data from Facebook and we just have to access that and analyse it and bring it to law enforcement if there are any cases there for further investigation so we have to prepare ourselves for those cyber-storms that will be attacking us very soon.
