Barangay officials should help spot cybersex dens

One of the effects of our poverty is the loss of a sense of decency and morality. You can feel this with the increasing number of cybersex dens that was reported uncovered by the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group-7 (CIDG-7) who recently rescued some of their victims. Most of these dens caught are located in Mandaue City, Consolacion, Lilo-an, Camotes and in Cebu City. But I’m sure that there are many more in the small towns, not just in Cebu Province, but here in Region 7 as well.

The raided cybersex den in Consolacion was owned by a Dutch national whose seven victims were rescued by the police in what is clearly a case of human trafficking. These victims, that included males, admitted to performing lewd acts in front of a web camera. We can only thank the CIDG for acting swiftly in raiding these cybersex dens. So, how do we stop these illicit practices especially that they are more difficult to spot as they are inside private apartments?

This is the job of the barangay officials, who should be able to spot any illegal activity because surely those people would talk as who and what’s going on inside this or that particular apartment? Barangay officials ought to know their respective neighborhoods very well, especially when it comes to illegal activities like drugs or cybersex crimes. Thankfully in this case, it is the CIDG who gathered the intelligence and did the raid. I just hope that barangay officials are not a party to such illicit activities happening in their own backyards.

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Last Friday, we reprinted a letter from a Vietnamese working with the police in the Fukushima area in Japan who found a 9-year-old Japanese boy at the end of the food line whose entire family perished in the Mar. 11 earthquake and tsunami. He gave his food rations to the boy who was lining up in the food line. But instead of eating the rations, he put in them in front of the line and returned to the end of the line, telling the Vietnamese that he wanted to share the food with the others who were just as hungry as he was. It was no doubt an article that got me a lot of text messages and emails, thanking me for sharing this story to our readers.

Here’s just one of the numerous letters that I got. I’m only reprinting one because most of those who emailed me wrote a very similar thank you note. Here’s the letter in full.

“Dear Mr. Avila, I was deeply touched by your story about the heroism of the Japanese boy. I can’t help but shed a tear. I don’t know if it’s because of shame that I wasn’t or can’t be like him or because we, as a people, do not have that kind of discipline. But whatever it is, it had a profound effect on me personally. Thank you for sharing the story. Sincerely, Ruben Sumo.”

Yes, I concur with this letter that many of us shed a tear not just because of the little boy’s compassion for his hungry fellowmen, but also because we as a nation of Filipinos could never hope to even have half the heart of that little boy. Yet we are a nation of Catholics, where our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us the most fundamental teaching in Christianity, “To Love God with all our heart, our soul, our strength and to Love our neighbors as ourselves.” The lesson that the Japanese boy taught us is to love our neighbors as ourselves and it is truly a shame if we cannot follow him.

This reminds me of a famous quote by Mahatma Gandhi: “I love the tenets and the teachings of Christianity, but I still have to meet and see my first Christian.” Clearly we Filipinos need to fix ourselves, not just from a life of materialism and corruption, but we need to have some kind of discipline, something we direly lack.

It is for this reason why I’ve always batted for the return of the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) which in my book is the only subject in College that teaches us discipline. I took all the four semesters in ROTC and indeed, it helped me develop my character. Well, the opening of classes is but two months away and I don’t see the return of the ROTC in the radar screens of the Aquino administration.

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THE BLACKBOX:

Another exciting addition for Cebu is the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation, Inc. (RAFI) 10-hectare Kool Adventure Camp (KAC) that broke ground in Barangay Cansumoroy, Balamban, Cebu. This will be the first outdoor experiential Center that will feature high and low challenge course like trekking, rope courses and a tent area in order to train our youth for future leadership. When this is fully operational, I will have this presented on Straight from the Sky.

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