Man behind online game that drove Kenyan teen to commit suicide pleads guilty
The mastermind and inventor of the so-called Blue Whale challenge, deemed in many countries as dangerous, has pleaded guilty to inciting teenagers to suicide.
In the deadly Blue Whale challenge, vulnerable teenagers are brainwashed by an ‘administrator’ over a period of 50 days. There are various administrators who are stationed in various countries in the world including Kenya.
Philipp Budeikin pleaded guilty in Russia to assisting teenagers to commit suicide, terming them as “biological waste” and that he was “cleansing society”.
Budeikin, 21, admitted to asking at least 16 Russian girls to commit suicide who all obliged. He told Russian law enforcement interrogators that all his victims were “happy to die”.
CLEANING OUR SOCIETY
“There are people – and there is biological waste. “Those who do not represent any value for society. Who cause or will cause only harm to society. I was cleaning our society of such people. It started in 2013 when I created F57 [online] community. I’d been thinking through this idea for five years. It was necessary to distinguish normal [people] from biological rubbish,” he said.
The administrator urges them to complete tasks various tasks that may range from listening to a song to waking up at strange hours.
The teens eventually enter day 50 with the final challenge of committing suicide.
In Kenya a 16 year old Kenyan teen from Kamukunji in Nairobi went through all the 50 stages of the challenge and ended up committing suicide.
In some countries, some teenagers lay on the path of oncoming trains, while others committed suicide using various methods which included one who jumped from a nine-storey building while another was found hanging.
HANG HIMSELF
In the Kenyan case, Jamie Njenga who was a form two student at JG Kiereini Secondary School, in Kiambu County, used a rope to hang himself at the balcony of a property owned by his grandfather.
Before committing suicide, he heard made several searches on google on how to carry out the act. He also sent text messages to his friends asking them to remember him and that they meet in heaven.
Earlier this week, the Kenya Film Classification Board (KFCB) CEO Ezekiel Mutua sent a letter to internet search giant to Google to take down the Blue Whale Challenge game from all download sites after the Kenyan teen committed suicide.
He said that he had further written to all internet service providers to block the video from being accessed in Kenya.
The Films board boss also said that he had contacted Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms to block all content related to the game.