COMMENT | As the world marks the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, Malaysia wakes up to yet another preventable loss of life.

A 40-year-old mother in Tanah Merah has been killed, allegedly by her husband, in a tragedy that mirrors countless others.

Her death did not begin with a knife. It began much earlier, in the shadows of fear, control, and sometimes digital intrusion.

When abuse follows women from their homes into their phones through tracking apps, surveillance, threatening messages, and coercive demands, technology-facilitated abuse becomes the earliest warning sign of femicide, a warning this country still refuses to take seriously.

This killing is not sudden. It is the final chapter of a story written long before the...