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Sorry, but that’s the truth. And not only babies either, but young people as well.

You may think sex outside of marriage is a sin, and that’s your prerogative. You’re certainly not alone in this belief – many religions and cultures will agree with you.

Fine, but it seems to me that where there is no victim, the punishment for sin should be up to God, not Man.

If you criminalise the victimless act of sexual congress between consenting adults/young people, you have a problem. And if you don’t believe me, read the newspapers here in Malaysia. Not a week passes without someone dying because of this senseless law and its application, and it’s usually the young and very often the newborn.

As a journalist in The New Straits Times said yesterday: “Bloody bundled babies have been found everywhere, on the steps of mosques and churches, in garbage bins, the town dump, in buses, orchards and public toilets – dead, alive; with or without their umbilical cords, heads or limbs; riddled with mosquito and ant bites, crushed, mutilated or burnt beyond recognition.”

And this: “In his haste to escape punishment from religious officers, a college student who was alone with his girlfriend plunged to his death from the fifth floor of an apartment.”
(Read Marina Mahathir’s comment here.)

If you are one of those who are governed by this law (and only half the people in Malaysia are), then you can be humiliated, arrested, charged, fined, imprisoned and/or caned for having sex with someone not your spouse. So when a righteous busybody (who never, ever of course commits anything at all that looks like a sin) calls up the religious police, who then start pounding on and/or breaking down doors, young people panic.

It seems every week or two, someone falls to their death trying to escape from the scene of their dreadful crime – sex with someone they aren’t married to. Young people mostly, who have succumbed to the most natural drive of all. Their hormones tell them one thing, their religion/culture tells them they mustn’t. And faced with shame, imprisonment and whipping, some of them take risks – and die. It saddens me. Given a chance, they probably would have grown up to be useful, considerate God-fearing members of their community. But they didn’t get a second chance.

Worse still is what happens when a young girl finds herself pregnant. In fear of the unpleasant legal consequences, she hides the pregnancy, thereby damaging the health of her child, then gives birth in secret (and yes, sometimes either she or the baby dies as a consequence), and then in her confusion and terror, kills or abandons the newborn. Sometimes the baby is found in time (usually covered in ants, and mosquito bites). Sometimes not.

Babies die because men decide to make a crime of the initial victimless sin.

And this is somehow a good thing? This law obviously doesn’t deter the sinners, that’s obvious from the number of cases. So where’s the benefit? Maybe someone can explain it to the baby that died in some shed somewhere…because I sure don’t get it.

Of course, Malaysians look for solutions. Let’s have places where pregnant mothers can go, let’s have places where they can take their newborns: all good ideas. I doubt they will make as much difference as these good people hope, because it will bring the young people who have transgressed to the attention of the law. So these places become places, not of sanctuary, but of identification and ultimately punishment. And anyone protecting the girls who ask for sanctuary could be charged with obstruction if they don’t disclose names.

Can we have more Malaysians suggesting out aloud that maybe we should be looking at the law and seeing if it performs what might be its purpose: halting extra-marital sex – and if it doesn’t, then dare to suggest it be scrapped?

Of course, if its aim is killing/harming babies, then I guess it’s doing just fine. Keep it going, and we’ll rid the world of a few more unwanted kids.
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This from today’s The Star newspaper:

“Give us RM 100,000 annually or we chop down all the trees near the water catchment areas in the state.” This was the threat Menteri Besar* Azizan Abdul Razak issued to the Federal Government.
He said the state government was losing millions in revenue because they could not chop down the trees for timber. “We know it is prohibited to cut down trees near water catchment areas, but the state is losing a lot in terms of revenue.”

You know what words sprang into my mind as I read that?

Blackmail and extortion.
A man who doesn’t worry about future generations.
A man who doesn’t care if even his own constituents have clean water and clean air.
A man who has never heard of global warming.
A man who has never heard of the value of the biodiversity of the rainforest.
A man who doesn’t care if he commits a crime even though he knows what the law says.
A man who doesn’t have the faintest idea of how to govern.

The guy is from PAS, a party which is supposed to uphold religious values. Yet his idea of good governance is to threaten to trash his state?

*Translation: Chief Minister – i.e. State Premier or State Governor, in this case, of Kedah State.

Today I drove the car up to K.L. for a project meeting. And I came home sitting in the cab of a tow truck, bouncing along (no seat belt) in the breeze (no windows) in the sun (no sun visors).

And had real trouble getting anywhere in my housing estate because all the mosque and surau-goers regard the streets as one big parking lot at lunchtime on Friday. They would rather triple park and block the road than walk a few metres. Too bad if you have an emergency – or a towtruck towing a car behind it. We couldn’t get anywhere near the workshop where I wanted to leave it. [I am actually quite used to this; they will even block my gateway on occasion.]

And why was this necessary? Because my car screamed every time I went near it.
Something to do with the alarm system or the electricals, I suppose. What is certain, there will be money involved in the repair thereof. Sigh.

More distressing was something in this morning’s paper.

After 50 years of independence, we still throw a kid as young as thirteen in a “boy’s prison” in Kajang for as little as – allegedly – stealing a handphone. We don’t actually know if he did, of course, because there has never been a court case. He won’t get sent to a boy’s home, or freed, until there is a court case, but the courts are too busy hearing cases of folk who have lawyers and money and who jump the queue.

A boy in the boy’s prison won’t go to school. Or get out. The family being too poor to pay the bail, he’ll just rot, spending what should be the best months – years? – of his life behind bars, uneducated… There are 400 boys in this situation under remand. In other words, they have never been found guilty of anything at all! And even if they were, should we be leaving them in a place that relies on good-hearted volunteers to care for their educational, medical and emotional health? Where is responsible government in all this? I don’t blame the prison authorities – they probably do their level best, but they – along with the boys – have been dealt a rotten hand by the system we have given them.

Of course, there are wonderful folk (the paper highlighted an NGO called Shelter Home,) who step in and do their level best to provide some classes and training, dental and medical care and counseling, and will even try to provide bail, legal help and such.

But why should this be necessary?

Shame on you Malaysia! After 50 years of nationhood this is how we treat our wayward youth? What are we trying to do – turn them into resentful, angry adults without the wherewithall to get a decent job as adults?

Next time you get robbed, ask yourself what it was that helped to shape the nature of the thief’s boyhood. Perhaps it was your indifference.

Happy birthday, Malaysia.