By Tracy Cabrera
SENATE, Pasay City — During the first public hearing on the Tacloban school shooting that killed three students and wounded several others, Senator Ana Theresia ‘Risa’ Hontiveros-Baraquel has disclosed information that indicate the incident was influenced by a group called ‘764’ which had been designated a “terrorist group” in Canada and a “national security threat” in the United States.
According to the opposition legislator, the information was gathered following the request of the mother of one of the victims who is seeking justice and demandng jail for the young perpetrators and not just rehabilitation.
Hontiveros, chairman of the Senate Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations and Gender Equality, noted that the Tacloban school shooters may have been ‘groomed’ in the same way 15-year-old Bradley Cadenhead of Texas Texas formed 764.
Cadenhead, she cited, claimed that an individual he met through the online game Minecraft aided him in starting 764, which name refers to the first three digits of his zip code in his home state in the United States.
In her opening statement, Hontiveros said the group, which has a global reach, allegedly looks for vulnerable minors online to encourage them to “commit horrible things.”
Based on the findings of the US Federal Bureau of Investigationb(FBI), the leaders of 764 “are pushing victims to create graphic pornography, to harm family pets, to cut themselves with sharp objects or to even die by suicide.”
Queried during the hearing as to what means the group uses, Hontiveros replied in the vernacular: “Paano? Kinakaibigan muna. Binibigyan ng sense of belonging.”
“There were indications that this NVE—nihilistic violent extremism—networks use (online) games such Roblox, Minecraft and Gorebox as recruitment havens,” she added.
However, the lady lawmaker clarified that she was not seeking for a total ban of online games: “Wala akong sinasabi na ang naglalaro ng games ay gagawa ng karahasan in real life. Fake news po iyon (I didn’t say that those playing (online) games commit violence in real life. That’s fake news.”
“Maraming kabataan ang naglalaro para magpahinga, makipagkaibigan, matuto, at maglibang. Malinaw po sa akin: Hindi games o gaming community ang kalaban,” she pointed out.
ia/xf
