Two pro-women’s rights groups today slammed the police’s decision to mark and chain 30 foreign women detained for alleged prostitution two nights earlier, accusing the men in blue of being chauvinists.

penang gro raid 030611 news clipping In a short but stinging statement, the Good Governance and Gender Equality Society, Penang (3Gs) and the Women’s Rights Awareness Association (WRAA) spared no one as they lambasted society’s skewed view of women as being both helpless and needy but at the same time the main cause of a laundry list of social ills.

“The police force, being the law-enforcing body of our society, not only did not show any efforts  to dispel such unfair notions about women, but instead reinforces traditional gender inequality by their frequent acts of subjecting women detainees to shame,” the statement read.

The two groups said the police’s common practice of exposing women detained in vice raids to the media only gives the impression that only women were involved or were the main culprits in such activities.

penang gro raid 030611 chain Yesterday, major Chinese dailies splashed pictures of the women being chained up in a group and with marks on various parts of their bodies, including one who had an X-mark written on her forehead, during a raid on a high-class nightclub in Penang.

The two NGOs said the marking and chaining of the women was as good as condemning them of a crime without even being proven guilty.

They added that even if a suspect is eventually found guilty, they still have the legal and human rights to be treated humanely.

“No persons whether guilty or much less  so if not guilty, should be treated cruelly, inhumanly or derogatorily.

penang gro raid 030611 marks on chest “... the fact that such acts were inflicted on women detainees reinforces the chauvinism of

the police officers involved,” read the statement jointly issued by 3Gs Penang executive director Steven Sim and WRAA secretary Teo Gaik Mooi.

Both organisations urged Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein and inspector-general of police Ismail Omar to probe the matter and put a stop to such humiliating treatment of both female and male detainees.

“One measure that can be taken is for the Malaysian government (to) disassociate itself from other  undemocratic regimes in the world and to immediately ratify the United Nation Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment.”