When former Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi made the remarkable comment of a “third world mentality with a first-world infrastructure” about his country, I wonder if he had the police involved in the recent raid in Penang in mind.
If civil groups and the public are upset over the manner in which women suspected of prostitution were treated – chained and had graffiti marked on their heads and bodies – it is understandable. And several letters in Malaysiakini have rightly criticis ed the unacceptable police action.
It is not what the police have done but how they have done it that is cause for concern.
This is the dark modus operandi of a police force that seems to have lost the plot about responsible and ethical law enforcement.
Beating demonstrators and abusing prostitutes are symptoms of the same sickness of police brutality. Their antics raise some disturbing questions about the propriety of police methods and even their legality and possible vulnerability to civil redress in the courts if people's rights have been violated.
1. Is it common police practice to treat suspects in an undignified and humiliating manner? After all were those women paraded in public to shame them caught ‘in the act’?
Even if they were caught in the act, should they not be accorded the respect due them as human beings especially in a so called Islamic country that is pedantic about public decency and morals and justice?
Whither the Islamic standards let alone the principle of natural justice that one is innocent unless proven guilty? Even the convicted still retain their legal rights and the right to uphold their dignity, although the law enforcers think nothing of destroying their own.
2. Why is there apparent selective police raids on suspected prostitution activity, when anyone who has visited Kuala Lumpur’s more popular streets know prostitution abounds unabated in hotels nearby and there is the occasional police raid to put up a pretence of enforcement?
We know the corrupt police (not all police, I should qualify) are on the take from criminals to look the other way. Police protection of brothels is common knowledge and is a lucrative business for both the brothel operators and the corrupt police involved.
Every police raid on so called ‘dens of prostitution’ has to be treated with a grain of salt unless there is continuous and unbiased raids of all establishments not just those selected under dubious discretion.
3. Why do the authorities allow women to enter the country to act as prostitutes when it would have been easier to stop them entering the country? It is a joke that occasional raids are planned and the brothel owners get rid of their less popular girls that way.
Dig deeper and you will find the sex industry is more pervasive than people realise and raids only expose the tip of the iceberg. It is a global phenomenon and often the hands of the police are not that clean everywhere.
4. Why is it always the women who are prosecuted and the men who use their services allowed to go free when ‘name and shame’ to embarrass the men may be a workable deterrent?
In foreign countries where prostitution is legalised those who patronise illegal ‘street walkers’ and are themselves called ‘curb crawlers’ are punished that way. Newspapers publish the names of convicted patrons.
5. If the women can be so badly treated in the public eye what protection is accorded them when they are in police custody?
6. And what of the women being forced into prostitution as sex slaves? How will the police do them justice when instead of rescuing them from their pimps they are treated with contempt?
I don’t want to criticise the police unfairly especially those just following orders, but they need to have a better strategy than their present one.
I hope for the sake of the prostitutes who are human beings, that women’s and other civic groups will safeguard their human rights and not allow the police to further abuse them while in their custody.
The reasons why women resort to prostitution are well researched and documented and society is hypocritical in condemning them when for many women it may be the last resort in earning money to stay alive, though many just want to make a quick buck and save enough money to leave the sordid business, perhaps with some hardcore ones willing to stay in the game for as long as they can.
Seeing the prostitutes shamed in public may give a false impression that the authorities have the problem under control, when there is another side of the call girl racket that is outside public gaze and the men who indulge in the activity are men in high office in the private and public sector. Providing women for sex as entertainment is entrenched in the business culture in Malaysia and other countries.
Such men including politicians and businessmen with titles are known to use high class call girls in the privacy of their swanky hideaways and posh hotels. You cannot stop this sort of activity because the world is a bad place and sexual promiscuity is as old as life unless you take stringent measures like some companies do that provide strict ethical guidelines.
The only effective way to curb it however is for men and women to come to the full realisation that what they are doing is wrong. It is a personal discipline and I know many men who do honour their marriage bed and stay away from illicit sex.
Sex is a gift from God for procreation and recreation but like driving it works best when the rules are observed. For this reason religion provides the best guidelines when it celebrates sex within the proper relationships which most religions teach is within marriage.
But religion is a two-edged sword if there is false teaching on sex. There is more than one way to have sex than the missionary position and the sex for procreation alone school is as misleading as those who preach sexual licence.
Thus reports that there is a women’s club teaching women to be good in bed is in the right direction but the men also need to be taught that self-control is something they need to learn. Why should women always have to try to please the men who may not be doing their part?
Women have needs too and the best sex comes not from techniques alone but a loving and intimate relationship at the emotional, psychological and physical levels. The obedient wife should expect to have the loving faithful husband.
Some studies have revealed that the best sex is between married couples. Lust is an emotional state of mind and often sexual promiscuity hides a deeper emotional problem. Why do newlywed men not think of sex outside marriage but will begin to stray after a few years or in later life?
Many men are like hungry ghosts of insatiable sexual appetites and when their feelings of lust are spent they will come to their senses and realize the folly of their ways when they lose everything, their health, wealth, loved ones and peace of mind.
Openness to discuss sex is a good thing but inordinate emphasis on the physical side of a relationship without consideration of the deeper and perhaps more important aspects of a relationship can result in an unhealthy relationship. But for some men it is a lost cause because extra-marital sex has become a part of their culture and tolerated at the highest echelons of society.
I find in Malaysian society as in many Asian settings, the man often fails to realize that women also have needs – sexual and emotional and that any attempt to improve man-woman relationships and marriages must adopt a more bipartisan approach and not exclude the need for men to be better husbands, perhaps also in bed, not just the women.
Shallow solutions that fail to help men and women deepen their relationships and marriages will only result in confusion and more unhappiness. False religious mores, prejudice and ignorance have to be dispelled as much as the idea that anyone can have a healthy relationship in an unhealthy tryst or casual commercial sexual escapade.
Sex is to be celebrated but it can become a curse when abused. Tiger Woods, Arnold Schwarzeneggar, Former Governor John Edwards, Silvio Berlusconi and other well known personalities may rue the day they allowed their testosterones to rule them. The pleasure and excitement are long gone but the pain and punishment prolong.
Punishing the prostitutes is not the solution. The upset wives are naïve if they think their wayward husbands will behave better with the prostitutes gone. They need to confront their men and the laws have to offer protection to the women.
The more certain deterrent for a straying husband is to warn him that he will face a divorce and legal suit for 50 percent of his assets and perhaps even a public shaming. I have seen it work before and now the husbands learn to drink from their own well.
I could suggest prosecute the patrons of prostitutes and put them in stocks in public places like in medieval times but then they would most likely bribe their way out of their troubles like the traffic offenders. It’s a man’s world I guess and they will more likely stone the woman
