You won’t believe which Msian state has the highest no. of rapes

Valentine’s Day is a day of love and romancing, regardless whether you and bae are Facebook official or not. But for some, it’s reliving their worst nightmare as globally, Valentine’s Day has seen an increase in rape and domestic violence. During this season, we felt that it would be interesting to revisit a subject that has been taunting the history of mankind for ever: rape.

Guess which Malaysian state has the highest number of rapes?

And the answer is……… SELANGOR.

Huh?? Selangor?! At this time, we wouldn’t know your guesses yet in the poll, but we thought it might be Kelantan or Terengganu since the two states are top in viewing porn online. Sure onot CILISOS, this answer boleh pakai? But it’s true, we got it from none other than Parliament – in the Home Ministry’s written reply to Rantau Panjang MP Siti Zailah Mohd Yusoff. More of how CILISOS got the stats much, much later, so bear with us k. 😉

Anyway, back to Selangor, the state recorded 196 cases, followed by Johor at 177 cases, and Kedah at 140 cases. Perlis was the lowest at 15. Here’s the rest:

Ok, here comes the disclaimer: the stats were only for the 6-month time frame from Jan-Jul 2014.

HANG ONNN, don’t cabut yet! We did a bit more digging and found rape stats by state from 2000 to 2005 on this blog, which got the figures from the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development. And still Selangor was the highest with 1,680 cases, second was also Johor with 1,622 cases, and thirdly Kedah with 774 cases. Perlis was again the lowest with 93 cases.

Even in that span of 5 years, 14 years before the Parliament stats, the top three states (Selangor > Johor > Kedah) and bottom-most state (Perlis) maintained their positions. Can you believe it? Walao, of all the things to be consistent in, this is not one the things Malaysian states should be proud of.

UPDATE: A few readers asked us to compare to population size, so here it is. Over  the Jan-July 2014 period, the most dangerous state is… Negeri Sembilan!

And over the 200-2005 period, it’s…. MELAKA!

 

If you notice, Selangor drops significantly down the rankings… but still…

That means one rape happens EVERY DAY in Selangor!

If we follow the Jan-Jul 2014 stats, at least one rape is reported every day in Selangor. That’s really bad shape wei. But if you think that’s terrible, the national average will SHOCK you:

“There are 3,000 rape cases reported every year on average, with only two out of 10 cases going to court. This implies that there is one female being raped every 35 minutes in Malaysia.” – Yeo Bee Yin, Damansara Utama ADUN on Free Malaysia Today

Here are the numbers from the Home Ministry – From 2005 to July 2014, there were 28,471 rape cases reported (averaging 3,000 cases each year). Only 4,514 (16%) of them were brought to court and only 756 (2.7%) perpetrators were found guilty. That means 27,715 victims did not see justice!

Worse still, rape is one of the most under-reported crimes in Malaysia and around the world. So in truth, there could be more than 28,471 rape victims suffering in silence!!  😥

Last year, Yeo Bee Yin and the All Women’s Action Society (AWAM) worked together on a digital campaign about rape. All those forums, workshops, and awareness training? Those old methods are useless, they said. So they came up with this video:

“Most of the rape cases involved victims below 16 years old,” said Yap Soo Huey, Penang Women’s Development Corporation (PWDC) Board of Directors member. In the video you saw the hamsap uncle in the car with the young girl? That’s statutory rape. In Malaysia, the law states that an adult commits rape if he/she has sexual intercourse with someone under 16 years old…even if it was consensual. This form of rape is unfortunately the MOST prevalent in Malaysia, making up about 56% of cases.

Some of you might remember this really high profile 1994 case, where Melaka Chief Minister Rahim Thamby Chik was accused of raping a 15-year-old schoolgirl. He was never convicted. Or more recently, a man raped a 12-year-old, then married her to make it “ok”. He was sentenced to 12 years in jail.

It’s heartbreaking to think the majority of rape cases in Malaysia involve children!

All the facts about rape in Malaysia are horrible, but perhaps the worst one of all is pretending it does not happen…

 

Rape statistics are no longer available publicly!

OMG wuuut? Are the authorities hiding rape statistics?

In 2014, Subang MP R. Sivarasa asked the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development in Parliament why they STOPPED publishing data on rape, domestic violence and sexual assault on children since 2008. At the time of writing this article, we tried to look for it too on the ministry’s website, but don’t have. You won’t believe the answer…

W-H-O-A!

The exact same thing happened to the Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO) 3 years before that, when they asked for stats from the police. Usually it’s available in a booklet by Bukit Aman’s Sexual Crimes Child Abuse Division.

“We need them to formulate public education messages and policy reform, for example, an important statistic is how many women die in their own homes and whether there are prior domestic violence reports, so we can see if there’s a link… Why should statistics on sexual crimes and crimes against children be ‘confidential’? Isn’t the request a basic one?” – Ivy Josiah

At first, the police rejected their request saying the stats were classified as confidential documents. Thinking there must be some mistake, WAO asked them again. Finally, the police sent them a copy with strict instructions that the information given was for reference and research purposes only – it cannot be shared with a third party. 😯

 

But if this info is so P&C, how did CILISOS get the stats?

If you clicked on these links earlier:

• Jan-Jul 2014 rape statistics by state
• Sivarasa’s question to the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development

You would have opened this site called Parliamentary Documents (pardocs). We didn’t have to sneak into the Dewan to eavesdrop, we actually got them from our awesome pals at Sinar Project. Sinar Project Coordinator Khairil Yusof told us pardocs is an ongoing project they have with Serdang MP Ong Kian Ming’s research team. It’s dem amayyyzzzzing!

“Ong Kian Ming’s team scans these written replies to oral questions (in Parliament), which are not published online, and share them with us. We have a script that automatically splits the scanned documents, and we upload it on the website that makes it searchable by the public.” – Khairil told CILISOS

Here’s the backgrounder – each sesi parlimen, MPs ask about 50 or so oral questions, but usually they oni got time for 10 or 20. The ones that they manage to discuss are available in the Senarai Penyata Rasmi (Hansard), but the written replies to those not discussed are NEVER seen by the public.

“Which means 40-50 detailed answers from government are never seen by the public. The 6,000 or so scanned replies in pardocs are all those official written answers for all sessions after GE 13 (2013-2015).” – Khairil

Nice! A sneak peek into never before seen Parliament answers. Click here for statistics and Parliamentary discussions on rape. But seriously, do check out pardocs if you need any information on Parliament discussions. It’s all there and our hats off to Sinar Project and Ong Kian Ming’s team for their amazing work.

 

Malaysia’s attitude towards rape is ‘tidak apa’… but you already knew that

As much as we hate to say it, a lot of evidence point out that Malaysians’ attitude towards rape is very poor, starting with withholding rape statistics from the public eye. So maybe the first step we can take to acknowledging we have a problem is to make the info public as it once was. Why do we need to hide it? At least if people know, they can take steps to be more careful and aware of their surroundings.

When rape happens, victim-blaming seems to be the culture in this country – it was how she dressed, or how she behaved. Remember when Ridhuan Tee dropped this bomb?

In reality, the way a woman dresses is not a contributing factor to rape, according to criminologist Associate Professor Dr. P. Sundramoorthy. He cited the case of 24-year-old engineer Noor Suzaily Mukhtar who was wearing a long skirt and tudung when she was raped. We should stop victimising the victim all over again. After their ordeal, they will need all the support they can get. If someone you know has just been through that, you can direct them to WAO or AWAM.

At least the police do try to create a comfortable environment for victims to report rape. In a written answer in pardocs, they explained how they follow the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and they have prepared a Bilik Triaj in stations, where people with sensitive cases can report them in privacy. Hopefully this’ll encourage more victims to come forward.

We could also go ahead with the Sexual Offenders Registration Act as suggested by Bukit Mertajam MP Steven Sim. The idea was raised by the police in 2007 after the Nurin Jazlin rape and murder, but then dunno apa jadi aldy, tak jadi…

“Nine years have passed, research upon research was done, various discussions and meetings took place, five ministers have helmed the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development and there has been three different IGP yet there is still no sight of the said bill.” – Steven Sim on The Malaysian Insider

CILISOS wrote an article on what improvements can be made to our rape laws. Like having a public sexual offenders register macam the US. With this system, parents can run a check on adults their children interact with. And we could change things in marital laws to protect spouses from rape and domestic abuse. Although in Malaysia, we’re gonna need more than law changes…it will require a change in mentality towards marital rape first.

If all the education masuk one ear, keluar the other ear, then perhaps we need to try different approaches – like the severity of punishments or strengthening laws – and find something that works, something that’ll send the message across. And make sure that we USE these laws instead of letting off people like Bunya Jalong, Noor Afizal Azizan and Chuah Guan Jiu with the lamest excuses like “he didn’t use his *ahem* so it’s not rape”, or “the perp has a bright future ahead of him so we should let him off”.

What about the victims? What about their futures? Victims deserve justice too so they can move on to have a better future.