Eleven Nepali security guards were detained for questioning by the Judiciary Police (PJ) on Monday for sharing a child porn video on Facebook, and seven of them admitted to committing the crime, PJ spokesman Lai Chio Hong said during a special press conference yesterday.

According to Lai, the Judiciary Police received a notice from Interpol early this month that some people in Macau were suspected of sharing a child porn video on Facebook between May and July.

PJ officers discovered that some people were sharing a two-minute-29-second-long video of an underage foreign girl having sex with a man. PJ officers later identified the suspects and went to four security companies on Monday morning where 11 Nepali security guards, aged between 21 and 36, were taken in for questioning. PJ officers also seized 11 smartphones that were allegedly used to share the child porn video.

According to Lai, seven of the eleven male suspects admitted to committing the crime and claimed that the video had been downloaded from a website by one of their compatriots from overseas after which they shared it with their fellow Nepali colleagues in Macau. The suspects denied that they shared the video for financial gain. Four denied the crime.

Lai said PJ officers would continue to investigate other possible suspects involved in the case.

According to Lai, PJ officers believe that the video was filmed outside Macau, and it has meanwhile been banned and automatically been blocked by Facebook.

The suspects were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday, facing child pornography charges, Lai said.

The Judiciary Police urged members of the public not to browse child porn websites and not to download or share child porn videos or photos which are serious crimes, according to Lai.

At least six child porn cases have been reported by the Judiciary Police since early this year, most of them involving non-resident workers including suspects from Nepal and the Philippines.

In July, the Judiciary Police urged non-resident workers in Chinese, English, Portuguese, Indonesian, Korean, Nepali and Vietnamese to stay away from child porn. Two Nepali non-resident cleaners were detained for browsing, downloading and sharing child pornography on July 17.

According to official statistics, Macau’s 183,219 non-resident workers at the end of July included 4,237 Nepalis.

The 11 hooded child porn suspects from Nepal are escorted by Judiciary Police (PJ) officers from the PJ headquarters in Zape to a vehicle yesterday. Photos: Iong Tat Choi 

A total of 11 smartphones seized from the 11 suspects are displayed during yesterday’s special press conference about the city’s latest child porn case at the pressroom of the Judiciary Police (PJ) headquarters.