Foreign terrorists grooming Filipino kids via Roblox—PNP
An emerging foreign terrorist movement has been grooming Filipino children into inciting violence, the Philippine National Police said during the Senate Committee on Women hearing on April 14.
Foreign individuals allegedly connected to the "nihilistic violent extremism" ideology have been making contact with Filipino children through online gaming platform Roblox to encourage them to perform violent acts, according to PCol. Romeo Desiderio, deputy director of the Philippine National Police Anti-Cybercrime Group.
Desiderio told the committee that contact normally begins on Roblox. The gaming platform has a built-in messaging system, or an in-app chat feature, where users can send direct messages within a game. The victims then carry out their discussions locally through Facebook messages.
Victims are usually between the ages of 12 and 15, the majority of whom are students in private schools.
Based on the data collected by the PNP-ACG, the children being groomed generally subscribed to the ideologies of Nazism or Satanism, with mentions of the Order of the Nine Angels.
"'Yung ating nihilistic violent extremism, Ma'am...the individuals or group commit or advocate violence because they believe life, society or human existence has no value or meaning," Desiderio told Sen. Risa Hontiveros, chairperson of the Senate Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations, and Gender Equality.
Recognized by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation as a "new form of digital extremism," according to CBS Evening News, individuals who subscribe to this movement are apolitical and hyper-focused on societal collapse.
They engage in "sadistic extortion online," Matthew Kriner, executive director of the Institute for Countering Digital Extremism, told CBS News. "It's meaning to groom and recruit youth...that are the age of 12 to 18 into conducting acts of self-harm, including suicide, and sometimes even what's called 'in-real-life' activities or terrorism, and that's going out and conducting stabbings and ultimately, school shootings."
Rescue operations
On Jan. 13, acting on a tip from their foreign counterpart through their Anti-Terrorism Fusion Group, the PNP-ACG preempted a potential mass violence act in a school in Calamba, Laguna being planned by a group of high school students for Feb. 16, their school's foundation day celebration.
According to Desiderio, the students discussed their plans through Facebook messages.
"The messages reference on past mass attacks and discuss using a fire extinguisher for a flash blinding effect, IEDs or the improvised explosive devices and Molotov cocktails," Desiderio said.
There were also references to a family possessing firearms. The messages likewise discussed inquiries made at a firing range where the students planned to practice shooting.
"Then some information mentioned plans to wear the 'natural selection' or the Hitler shirts, 'yung sa Nazis," Desiderio continued. The students also made plans to post a final YouTube message and write a manifesto.
The messages were traced back to the Facebook account of one of the students. He had been planning the attack with six of his friends.
The seven students were rescued by the PNP-ACG, in coordination with the Department of Social Welfare and Development, local government unit, and local police. The group has also conducted five previous rescue operations involving 12 minors in Marikina, Las Piñas, Negros Occidental, and Pampanga.
