By Alex P. Vidal
“We have to remain vigilant and loud and stay consistently engaged with our representatives and the political process every single day, on both a macro and micro level.” – Billy Eichner
SINCE January 2020, no major news has exploded in the media about graft and corruption, among other anomalies and malfeasance that can be committed by insincere and sneaky government officials, police and the military.
Since March 2020 when the world started to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, most media reports focused entirely on the number of cases of those infected, those who survived and those who died, the quarantine protocol, the stranded OFWs, the violators of the social distancing rules and guidelines, the misbehaving and trigger-happy cops, etcetera.
Nothing has changed, so far.
Except for a few “guest” but not-so-earthshaking headline stories that interrupted the long saga of the deadliest virus this generation has ever experienced, newspapers, TV, radio, and the Internet continue to dish stories heavily about the coronavirus pandemic.
We should not forget that no pandemic or natural and man-made disaster can stop the thieves and the thugs from preying on the wealth and assets of the government.
While we are all busy counting the dead bodies of coronavirus patients, reading the statistics of COVID-19 cases, worrying about our lost jobs and income, and waiting for the next tranch of our Social Amelioration Program (SAP) benefits, some dishonest public officials and men in uniform could be silently pulling a broad daylight heist and emptying the public coffers.
Let’s not forget to also activate and mobilize our check and balance apparatuses while, at the same time, we struggle to roll past the COVID-19.
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LET’S hope that some of the recent grisly rape-murder crimes committed while the world was agog over the vaccine for the COVID-19, had nothing to do with the latest social media craze called “Tiktok.”
Incidentally, two of the female teenagers murdered separately in Ilocos and Laguna had appeared in Tiktok videos, but the motives for their killings reportedly were a “crime of passion” and “vendetta.”
Two months ago, I randomly made an appeal in a video on social media for all parents to monitor closely the activities of their teenage daughters inside their rooms while we all stayed at home during the COVID-19-induced lockdown.
I suggested that parents not be too complacent and overconfident just because the minors were inside the house during the lockdown.
This was after I noticed some of these girls dancing inappropriately and scandalously exposing the sensitive parts of their bodies in the videos posted on TikTok, a Chinese video-sharing social networking service.
TikTok users creat short dance, lip-sync, comedy and talent videos.
It is an internet technology company founded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming based in Beijing.
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My point was some of those girls, while gyrating and intentionally showing some explicit sexual facial expressions and soundbites, could be endangering themselves, as well as other girls their age as sex fiends and other predators who happen to live nearby or within their neighborhood, might be monitoring them on Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms.
Seventy percent of rape victims were reportedly known or familiar to their attackers.
Only a few percent of rape cases occurred randomly or those who were attacked for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, it was reported.
Statistics show that more than half or 51.1% of female victims of rape reported being raped by an intimate partner and 40.8% by an acquaintance.
As for male victims, more than half or 52.4% reported being raped by an acquaintance and 15.1% by a stranger.
The self-reported incidence of rape or sexual assault more than doubled from 1.4 victimizations per 1,000 persons age 12 or older in 2017 to 2.7 in 2018.
Based on data from the survey, it is estimated that 734,630 people were raped (threatened, attempted, or completed) in the United States in 2018.
Despite the increase in self-reports of rape and sexual assault, there was a decrease in reporting to police from 2017 to 2018.
Forty percent (40%) of rapes and sexual assaults were reported to police in 2017, but only about 25% were reported to police in 2018, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC).
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)
