Child found sexually assaulted and killed by
The fact that the murderer(s) could actually commit such a henious crime with such brutality is a splash of cold water in our faces. This is not just what we can read in the newspapers, or watch in Hollywood movies – it’s real. Monsters like this live among us. They could be anyone – our friends, part of our family, the (wo)man we serve in our shops everyday, or just the average person we so happen to bump into on the street.
This year itself, there have been several child abuse/murder/rape cases in the newspapers. How many other children continue to suffer silently? Most importantly – how many of these monsters are actually found and forced to serve their time to repay for their brutality? How many of them are still walking among us today, endangering the children around us?
In a conversation with May and Sim last night, we were talking about how our youth today is brought up in a vicious environment. It’s not foreign for us to read about bus crashes, plane crashes, murders, rapes, burglaries and all sortsof crimes. Many of us are now desensitized by this material and many are now living in a state of acceptance of this reality! “Normal lah… nowadays, people are cruel..” Is this really enough? How can anyone accept this as a reality? Our police forces need to be updated with the latest technology and halt their petty and incessant internal battles and concentrate on the real deal here – people, especially children, are hurt, abused, killed each day and they do nothing about it. Instead they run around nabbing suspected khalwat individuals, or jailing youths for months on end for not carrying an IC or worser still, collecting duit kopi for petty crimes and letting these suspects go. Do these people, our law enforcement, realize that there’s a bigger picture here? Today, there are at least 3 articles in Nation pull out of theStar about murders or missing persons. I’m confident that there are a lot more out there that don’t receive coverage.
What are our law enforcers doing to combat all this?
You cannot stop crimes. You can prevent them. You can lower the risk of these crimes.
One thing our country doesn’t have is a proper social services department to act on reports on abuse against children and the elderly. My own neighbour used to abuse his old father each day. We would have reported it but to whom? Would the authorities take charge, considering it’s a “family matter”?
It’s appalling how sour our country has turned out to be on our 50th year of independence. Have we made any progress? Sure, we have the amazing infrastruture, architecture and brilliant graduates churned out this year. But we’re so concentrated on success that we don’t look into the heart of the problem - the people. Do we really want our children growing up in this environment? This place where letting our children run free in the playground puts them at risk of cruel sexual predators and when you do, at the end of the day “Who asked you to let your children play unsupervised?”
Our old battles were fought against the British, the Japanese, the communists for all these crimes. We read articles, books on how brutal crimes against women and children were during the Japanese occupation. But today, it’s our own people we need to fear. Our own people to protect our children from.
Question now is whether or not we’re putting in enough efforts to combat crime against the people. We capture bloggers, jail them, grill them for hours over a comment left by a random person on their websites. Do we do the same for the murderers of the Mongolian woman, Altantunya? Or Canny Ong incident, not too long ago? We focus on the high profile cases. It takes our law enforcers years to solve a crime. And then what? Why are our papers reporting on Tun Mahathir’s daily diets when more coverage can be given to raise the awareness that we’re not safe anymore?
I’m not saying other countries are perfect. Madeleine McCann’s disappearance in Portugal marks the sinking feeling that there are more of these child predators out there and no child, boy or girl, seems to be safe from them.
How are we to raise children in an environment like this? How are we to do so when every minute of the day, we worry for their safety? I don’t have children of my own yet. But when the time comes, I wonder what sort of world they will be born into. It’s bad enough that our country has expanded at the expense of our rainforest and environment. But to bring a child up in this brutal madness? Maybe we need to reevaluate our priorities and values.
So really, where do we go from here?
Hi. I'm Xinch. I'm a proud Penangite. Passionate about many things. I love to talk, ramble, and thus, I blog. 
