APRIL 13 — Just a week ago, Shabudin Yahya, who is Umno Member of Parliament for Tasek Gelugor, has caused outrage among right-minded Malaysians after saying that there is nothing wrong with rape victims marrying their rapists, as they would not have to face “bleak future”.
He has also said that girls as young as 9 or 12, as long as they have reached puberty with bodies akin to 18 years old girls, are ready to be married.
Deep down at the core of Shabudin’s “marrying the rapist” and “9 year-old can wed” notions is not only his personal perversion but also the manifestation of the deep-rooted patriarchy in Malaysian society.
At this day and age, women are still seen by some as objects, possessions or somewhat inferior to men in Malaysia. While 9 years old boy will be thought to be at the age of going to school and playing at the fields but 9 years old girl is seen by some as “ready to marry”.
When rape happened, we often heard questions like “What was she wearing?”, “Where was she?”, “Did she go out late?”, “Was she drunk?” and “Did she say no?” as if she deserved to be raped if the answers to these questions fit the stereotypical conditions of “inviting rape”. The toxic belief that victims are partly or fully responsible for their own violations continues to permeate in our society.
When murder happens, it’s always the murderer’s fault; when robbery happens, it’s always the robbers’ fault; when drug trafficking happens, it’s always the traffickers’ fault; but why when rape happens, it is the victim’s fault? No woman or girl deserves to be raped, no one.
This patriarchal victim-blaming culture explains why very few victims have the courage to report to the authority, not to mention seeking rape survivals’ support, because they are afraid of being blamed, looked-down and deserted.
Only 2 out of every 10 rape cases in Malaysia are reported. On average, there are about 3,000 reported rape cases every year, if we include the unreported cases, we’ll come out with an astonishing fact — one girl or woman is being raped somewhere in Malaysia every 35 minutes. Worse still, around 2 out of 3 rape victims are minors — girls below 16 years old!
According to a parliamentary reply from the Home Ministry, from 2005 to July 2014, a total of 28,471 rape cases were reported, of which only 16per cent of them (4,514 cases) were brought to court, and only 2.7per cent of them (765 cases) were found guilty. Such a saddening low rate of conviction!
There seems to be no justice for rape victims in Malaysia. They are questioned, doubted, looked down upon and even suggested to marry the very persons that violated them! Even when they are brave enough to follow through the legal system, less than 3 out of the 100 of them will see justice being served.
How the Federal Government and Umno have been trivializing Shabudin’s abhorrent remarks about rape for the past one week shows how little commitment they have to combat rape culture in Malaysia.
I am particularly disappointed with the women minister Datuk Rohani Abdul Karim, who’s supposed to be the very person that leads the country to safeguard the interests of women and girls. She gave no words of rebuke or correction, instead she was taking non-intervention approach and said it’s up to Shabudin to decide to apologize or not.
All of these actions send wrong signals to the society that such patriarchal mindset is tolerable when it is not as it will continue to fuel the rape culture in Malaysia.
Datuk Rohani should immediately right the wrong. Most importantly, women ministry should look into ways to spread the correct information about rape. Without mindset shift from patriarchal culture that fuels the rape culture, the perpetuating rape problems in Malaysia will not be solved.
(p/s: As part of our effort to counter victim-blaming culture and to raise awareness about rape, my office has sponsored an anti-rape video entitled “Rogol, Salah Siapa?”. It was launched on my Facebook page five days ago (8 April 2017) and has received more than 130,000 views to date: https://www.facebook.com/yeobeeyin/videos/802992369854690/. We have also built a website: www.antirogol.com last year that publishes important information to help rape victims and their families as well as activists. We hope Malaysians can help to spread this information to their friends and families.)
* Yeo Bee Yin is the MP for Damansara Utama.
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.
