Photos and video clips of women and schoolgirls have been circulating online in Telegram chat groups, grabbed from social media platforms such as Tiktok and Facebook.
Some of the images and video clips involved minors, and all the usernames of the women in the videos were clearly seen, bringing back memories of the 2019 downfall of the SG Nasi Lemak chat group, said a report from Asia One.
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What is the SG Nasi Lemak chat?
Harkening back to 2018, the original SG Nasi Lemak chat group circulated photos and videos of Singaporean women online against their will. The heart of the chat group was a crowdsourced collection of photos and videos of women the 44,000 member-strong group shared among themselves, which featured both pornographic and non-pornographic content. Members were encouraged to upload their “finds”, without a care for the subject’s consent.
What made the chat group so dangerous was that even when some of the women’s names were concealed, online perverts were able to trace the images and videos (some sent in confidence due to the private nature of the photos) to their owners–and uploaded these as well.
Some of the content was incredibly popular that sticker packs appeared on the app that featured some of the Malaysian women in the collection of racy photos.
Aside from the naked photos, photos taken of women in public transport, sexual enhancement drugs, vaping paraphernalia, and even sexual services were advertised in the group.
Since its creation on 2018 until its fall the next year, the group had 29 administrators. Police arrested five individuals connected to the chat group in October 2019.
An administrator for the chat group, Liong Tianwei, 39, was jailed for nine weeks and fined $26,000 on Tuesday, March 9. He was found to have over 11,000 obscene photos and videos on his five phones and laptop. Initially very combative and uncooperative, he eventually capitulated to providing his passwords to the police.
The Straits Times said, “He pleaded guilty to three counts of distributing obscene material, two counts of facilitating the provision of sexual services, and one count of possession of obscene films.”
Tianwei was an unemployed father of two at the time the crimes were committed.
Is SG Nasi Lemak back?
A National University of Singapore student named Nisha Rai, 21, stumbled upon the groups via Twitter, and found that the content was similar to the now-defunct SG Nasi Lemak Telegram chat. The political science undergraduate then filed a police report.
The chat was mentioned in online forums such as Hardware Zone, but the topic was immediately taken down.
Acting along with other private individuals allied with a college anti-sexual harassment organization, Rai was able to uncover 60 more chat groups, with considerably lesser members than the original SG Nasi Lemak group. Students for a Safer NUS, which Rai is a member of, posted a statement on their social media on March 24 to notify students that dangerous chat groups were on the rise.
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They also contacted 30 victims of the illegally collected and distributed content.
She said, “It’s so disgusting. The pictures sent are of adults and minors. It was very hurtful to see such content circulating, and the worst part was the victims were not aware or were afraid to reach out.”
