I have been working in the US for the last few years and have been reading the news regularly. It is utterly disgusting to hear Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar demanding for an apology from the Philippine government for the outrage over the alleged rape of a 'Filipina' minor who turns out to be Malaysian.

My American friends who have read the news and comments made by our minister could not believe that a person who holds such an important ministerial post could make such disgusting and unbelievable demands. Being a representative of the nation, he paints a very bad picture of Malaysian mentality and intelligence! Does he think that we are so dumb to buy into the diversion that he is trying to create?

The questions that come to mind are — how did our authorities mess up so bad as to deport their own citizen? Why do you care about the nationality of the individual when what is more important is the bigger offence at hand — (alleged) rape !

The victim being a minor makes it even more serious. Has an investigation been authorised to find out why a Malaysian was deported and to severely reprimand or punish those responsible? Why was a DNA test authorised so fast to establish the parents of this minor when a DNA was not even conducted on the girl that Rahim Tamby Chik was alleged to have raped?

We can only speculate the reason our government wanted to prove that this girl was a Malaysian, and it doesn't look good based on the authorities' record in handling scandals that reflected badly on them.

For all we know, the girl will be detained (for allegedly not producing documents to prove her nationality, as revealed

by the Home Ministry parliamentary secretary Abu Zahar Isnin yesterday). Why do the authorities need to bring her back for so-called "further questioning" when she was able to identify the seven men who allegedly raped her? Isn't that enough proof to investigate the seven?

What makes it even worse is that Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad who has had 21 years or so leading the country comes out and makes the same demand

— it is unbelievable! It looks like Mahathir, despite his long prime ministerial years, just cannot handle criticisms.

Just because he got a strongly worded letter from Philippine President Gloria Arroyo and was hurt by the damaging "minor raped by seven Malaysians" headlines worldwide, he gets all offended and has to find a means of getting back? What is our country coming to — a very uncaring nation?

It is time for us to accept facts and our mistakes and take steps to prevent them from happening again. Only when we accept our mistakes will we be able to make a better world for ourselves. Otherwise, we'll just be kidding ourselves.

I don't often write to the media but reading this article just compels me to write and voice my disgust.