“When I was your age, they would say we can become cops or criminals. Today, what I’m saying to you is this: when you’re facing a loaded gun, what’s the difference?”

- Jack Nicholson as Frank Costello in The Departed (2006)

COMMENT | I have been following the case involving executions in Durian Tunggal, Malacca, since the audio recordings were making the rounds on social media.

I do not know if many people know this, but while the recordings of the men’s pleas were horrifying rational Malaysians, there was another recording in Tamil that claimed these men were criminals, thus there was no need for any public outrage.

Whether people think of these men as criminals or victims is irrelevant. What we have here and in many other cases involving the police in alleged or confirmed extrajudicial killings is the state security apparatus taking the law into their hands and, in the process, attempting to cover it up.

In nearly all these cases, the police claim that...