The government is considering publicly whipping child rapists amid public anger over the rape and murder of two 10-year-old girls in a fortnight.

Minister in the Prime Minister's Department and de facto law minister Rais Yatim will propose whipping and setting up a sex offenders register at the next cabinet meeting, the New Straits Times said today.

Rais said the idea of public whipping had been mooted by former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad in 2002 but had been rejected.

"I will propose this to the cabinet once again and hope that this time around society will fully support the government in amending the law and making the punishment for child rape more deterrent," he said.

"The number of sex crimes, especially against children, is rising and we must curb this."

Register for sex offenders

A separate register for sex offenders, to track and monitor their activities after their release from prison, was also necessary, Rais said.

"Having a separate (register) would facilitate the monitoring of such individuals after they have served their jail sentence and I am putting forward such a proposal to the cabinet at our next meeting," he was quoted as saying by The Star .

"In the United Kingdom, sexual offenders are watched closely even after they have served their sentence."

Police are not currently required to monitor the movement of sex offenders after their release.

The government is also expected to discuss overhauling its anti-drug strategies following revelations that the two rapes and murders were allegedly carried out by drug addicts believed to be heroin users.

It has "heightened the urgency of tabling the paper to reform measures," a Home Ministry official was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times .

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was "not too happy" with the high relapse rate among drug addicts released from rehabilitation centres, said to be as high as 90 percent.

The government's soul-searching has been prompted by public outrage over the murders of the two schoolgirls, whose faces haunt local newspapers daily.

Gang-raped

Last Saturday, Nurul Huda Ghani was found barely alive and naked on the floor in the toilet of a guardhouse just 100 metres from her home in southern Johor state. She had been gang-raped by three men, sodomised and strangled. She was taken to hospital but later died.

Two men, a 46-year-old security guard and a 27-year-old unemployed man have been arrested, and police are searching for a third suspect.

The alleged involvement of a guard, with previous convictions for crimes including sexual assault, has also sparked calls for more thorough vetting of the men who protect apartment buildings and homes in Malaysia.

On Jan 8, Haserati Saridi was stabbed to death after being raped while walking to school in eastern Sabah state.

A 26-year-old man released from prison last month after serving a sentence for theft has pleaded guilty to raping her, a crime which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in jail and a whipping. He will later also be charged with murder, which carries the death penalty.

According to official police statistics, the number of reported rape cases rose from 1,210 in 2000 to 1,354 in 2001 and 1,418 in 2002.

Almost two-thirds of the victims were under the age of 16. - AFP