Prague, April 23 (CTK) – Interior Minister Milan Chovanec has called on the police to submit evidence about the existence of the online game Blue Whale, which allegedly encourage the players to commit suicide and against which the police recently warned, he told public Czech Television (CT) yesterday.
Czech experts said the game was a hoax.
Police President Tomas Tuhy should explain the case within two weeks and the public has the right to know whether the police made a mistake, Chovanec said.
“I want to know whether the police are scaring or warning,” he said.
Martin Kozisek, Internet security manager of the Seznam.cz web portal and search engine, and Kamil Kopecky, head of Palacky University’s E-security project, declared earlier that there is no Blue Whale game. The whole thing was a marketing move to attract new users to particular groups on social networking sites, they said.
Kopecky said the news about the game spread from Russian web portals Novaya Gazeta and Siberian Times. These sources claimed that more than 130 children committed suicide in Russia in 2015-16 and most of them were connected with Internet discussion groups called The Blue Whale.
Chovanec said the wants the police to check the case. He said he cannot believe that the police would be cheated by a hoax.
He said it is a question whether the police should inform the public about such games because the warning might cause even bigger panic.
kva/dr
