And, finally tonight, cyberbullying - and bullying in general were brought into sharp focus last week when a standard six student in Santa Cruz was mercilessly harassed and assaulted by high schoolers.
That crime allegedly started with cyber bullying and today on Sunup the head of the Unit discussed what all this includes:
Host
"What is considered a cyber crime, or cyber bullying? Cyber bullying. Yes, so what is considered cyber bullying, and then if it's possible to add some kind of examples in there to really put it into context for people that are trying to grasp it properly?"
Osman Mortis, Head of Cyberbullying
"Bullying, you know. It's the unwanted, aggressive behavior among students to coerce, to harass, to intimidate. And it could be the peers, people that you go to school with, who would want to cause physical harm, who would want to just tease, humiliate, and things like these."
Host
"Superintendent, I know we're talking about, you know, school-age folks because of the recent incident happened with this young man that was bullied, and we saw the video circulating. But I think it's also important to mention that cyber bullying happens all over, irrespective of the age."
Osman Mortis, Head of Cyberbullying
"There is a remedy under the law. There is the Cyber Crime Act that is in place from since 2020, and ignorance of the law is no excuse. But at the same time, we try to create awareness so that people know what they're doing is wrong."
"Some of them actually don't know. Under Belize law, we don't directly refer to it as cyber bullying, but cyber bullying is real. And under the Cyber Crime Act Section 15, it speaks about the harassment, the coercion, intermediation with intent to humiliate."
"So it comes down to the same thing. Well, I'm going to talk in terms of students, young students, school -age students. Whenever these cases happen, what the student can do is ignore that person who is, if they can, ignore them."
"They can save these posts and these things that the person is sending to them, you know, they can use the platform like Facebook Messenger to block these persons. You can even block a phone number of a person who is actually doing this."
"You can also speak to an adult that you trust. It can be a parent, it can be a teacher, a school counselor, you know. There are many adults that you can talk to about it. Don't keep it to yourself. Try to get it out there and, like I said, document everything so that you have proof."
"This happened and when it happened and stuff like that."
Host
"What about the persons that share the post that involves bullying?"
Osman Mortis, Head of Cyberbullying
"If you send, share and post these things, you are also liable under the Cybercrime Act, because continue to propagate this thing."
