21st July 2021
After 9 police reports made on a domestic violence case, Home Minister Hamzah Zainuddin must come clean and explain why the Kedah police had not taken serious action to render justice for S. Yoshita.
S. Yoshita, has been a victim of domestic violence for the past 12 years at the hands of her own husband. She had endured kicks, punches, starvation, being dragged down the stairs, hair pulled, kicked, strangled, slapped, spat on and verbally abused and suffering 2 miscarriages throughout her marriage as a result of incessant beatings and psychological abuse.
She herself had made 8 police reports from February this year till April, 4 in Kedah and 4 in Selangor including submitting a medical report on assaults against her on April 4th 2021 in Kedah. An additional report was made by another family member against her husband.
She has been given a protection order by the Petaling Jaya Magistrate Court and has her 2 year old son with her. But both her daughters, aged 11 and 7 are with her husband in Kedah and she has not seen them for 3 months. Any parent would ache to see and to know if their children are in safe hands or not. Clearly, it is a risk for them to be still under the same roof of her abusive husband.
The Kedah police chief Kamarul Zaman Mamat has shown a lack of professionalism and his statement denying the reports made by Yoshita is a setback to the campaign to create an awareness for victims and survivors of domestic violence to come forward to lodge a police report so that action be taken against the perpetrators.
It displays a lack of seriousness and sends a grave message in addressing the gravity of this crime. Will this inaction not plant doubts in the minds of people in Kedah and possibly everywhere else in the country that a police report would mean action, and prompt swift action be taken by the authorities?
It is this sort of thoughtless statement by the man on top to trivialise the suffering of this woman at the evil hands of her abuser that may deter many others to come forward to make police reports of their sufferings so that the abuser is reprimanded and justice served for them.
As the Minister of Home Affairs has always maintained his knee-jerk reaction of issuing statements on immigration policies, after 48 hours I and fellow Malaysians, particularly Yoshita are still waiting for a statement of an order to show cause of the inaction and playing down the abuse and violence this woman had to endure, not just for 12 years but after 9 police reports made against him.
How many more police reports need to be made for the arrest of the perpetrator? How many more police reports are needed for the police to launch investigations and submit investigation papers to the Deputy Public Prosecutors office for further action?
902 cases of domestic violence had been recorded from January to April this year. The World Health Organisation estimated that globally, 1 in 3 women have been subjected to violence in the form of either physical and/or sexual by a partner or a non-partner in their lifetime. Given this statistic, Malaysia would have seen at least 2706 women who are survivors of domestic violence in the first 4 months of the year. This means that there had been, on average, 22 cases of domestic violence per day in Malaysia from January to April this year! A chilling number for us all.
I demand for an apology by the Kedah Police Chief for denying justice and trivialising Yoshita’s suffering as a survivor of domestic violence and for an explanation by the Home Minister on his course of action to right the wrong in the case of Yoshita.
She had already suffered abuse and violence at the hands of her husband. She shouldn’t have to suffer at the hands of incompetent law enforcers.
Kasthuri Patto
Member of Parliament for Batu Kawan
International Secretary for Wanita DAP
