Squatgate - Dodgy Police Excuses

I am sure that very early yesterday morning I saw on Lim Kit Siang’s website a posting on how a prominent Malaysian Malay-language newspaper attempted to turn the scandalous police abuse of a naked woman, made to perform ear squats in the Petaling Jaya police station, into a racial issue.

The newspaper alluded to several thousands Chinese nationals overstaying, based on Immigration figures. I can't remember those figures but I vaguely recall 50,000 being tossed around. They could well be potential 5th columnists. But Lim Kit Siang massacred those figures, showing how implausible those stats worked out to be.

I had thought I’ll blog on something else before I would return to that posting to see if I can comment a bit further on Lim’s article, but within an hour’s time, that posting disappeared. Maybe I had been dreaming – perhaps some kind DAP bloke or even Mr Lim Kit Siang can confirm I wasn’t. Maybe Lim had his figures incorrect and had to withdraw the posting?

Assuming I wasn’t dreaming, I recall Lim’s comments that the Malay-language newspaper warned critics of the police abuse not to question or challenge issues of national security, and Lim asking how in the world could Malaysia’s national security be affected by people condemning the shameful act of making a woman perform ear squats in the nude.

UPDATE: The Lim Kit Siang article Utusan Melayu – Don’t Turn It to Racial Issue that I mentioned has been moved to the DAP website because it is a statement by Lim Guan Eng, the Sec-Gen of the DAP.

I think Lim has highlighted the real troubling issue, the police abuse, rather than statistics and alleged or imagined threats to national security.

UMNO ministers and members or pro-UMNO lobbies have the habit of invoking images of racial strife or blood soaked keris or national security whenever they want to intimidate critics of their actions, misconduct or policies into silence. The old favourite threat used to be the potential for another May 13th occurrence, except after more than 30 years, the younger generation of Malaysians may not know what the hell happened on May 13th 1969.

On the issue of police abuse, a government organ or department would usually have a prescribed function, and therefore must performed to the intent of its function, whether it be security, safety, health, etc.

Take, for example, the Road Transport Department or JPJ. One of its role is to be responsible for road and driving safety, ensuring that vehicles and drivers are safe to be on the roads.

Delving deeper into a more specific example, the authority licenses drivers only after it has been satisfied that the applicant is competent to drive safely on Malaysian roads. So it tests applicants on road codes, highway rules and procedures and ability to interpret road sign, etc as part of its knowledge test on safe driving competency.

But it may not ask and then fail an applicant on a question that requires the candidate to know the price of a car model, or whether Brand X car has a more efficient fuel consumption than Brand Z. These questions would not be relevant to road/driving safety and if asked, would be deemed as the JPJ's examiner abusing his or her powers in the course of testing an applicant for a driver licence.

Similarly, in a citizenship oral interview or test, during which the applicant would be tested on a reasonable command of the national language (Malay), the interviewer may not extend the language test into an IQ test.

Many many years ago, there were complaints that interviewers took the poor frightened applicants into an unauthorised dimension by asking about the characteristics and behaviour of snakes and whatnot, with a seeming deliberate intention to befuddle the interviewee with more and more awkward and complicated questions, probing into details of the subject matter rather than a command of the Malay language. In a number of cases, the applicants had already demonstrated sufficient command of the Malay language.

The Malaysian Police has the important task of security and protection of the community by ensuring that the civil laws of Malaysia are adhered to, essentially a law and order assignment.

Dash across a red traffic light and the caught offender shall be penalised - because he's a danger to society and could result in someone being killed. Break into someone’s house and the culprit shall be arrested and taken to courts where if found guilty, a sentence would be imposed - because he is a threat to someone's possessions and sanctity of property.

But how does making a naked woman do ear squats contribute to national or community security?

An implausible argument has been the need to strip woman to ensure she wasn't concealing or carrying dangerous stuff, like cyanide pills, daggers and even submachine guns and RPG - OK, KTemoc exaggerates a wee bit.

But this explanation falls apart in several cases where the victims didn't mention any body search other than to be stripped. One even had her mammary glands described as 'fantastic' by an ogling policeman who gestured to her his silent appreciation. I presume she wasn't then a threat to Malaysia's national security.

In the Squatgate incident, the videoclip showed the woman already deprived of all her clothes while the over-sighting policewoman was standing metres away watching the poor victim doing the squats, following which she was allowed to dress up. That was hardly indicative of a security or safety situation requiring such a nude body search. It was punishment per se. Police are not authorised to inflict punishment on the public.

More importantly, Sankar Nair, a former cop-turned-lawyer stated in Malaysiakini that nude body searches, when deemed necessary, must be witnessed by an officer of at least the rank of inspector and properly recorded in the official log book. The policewoman who conducted the nude ear-aquat was only a corporal.

Incidentally, the same accusation of concealed weapons was what one Sydney rightwing Christian minister, Fred Nile, alleged that Muslim women wearing the chador and hijab (middle-eastern dress) could well be concealing those arms under their clothing.

Instead of police rushing forward to strip Muslim women to see whether they had AK-47s or shining simitars as Reverend Fred Nile had advocated, the Christian minister was shot down by most Australians quicker than the old USSR shooting down an American U-2 spyplane. In Malaysia, Reverend Fred Nile would find like-minded personalities, except of course he ought to be made aware they aren't Christians.

Is stripping the only way to conduct a search? Could there be a less humiliating treatment for detainees? The answer is obvious even without the use of modern technology! The pathetic excuses had been nothing more than parochial attempts to protect an abusive group of police personnel who had misused their public-assigned powers.

Then the attempts to explain away the ear squat employed the justification that the manoeuvre would enable various secreted item to fall out of the woman’s “cracks” as she was made to squat. Yet the Squatgate policewoman was metres away - hmmm, perhaps in case the grenade that dropped out of her whatever might explode?

What about the need for holding her ears? Shall we class the ears also under "apertures" as those other body “cracks”? How does one 'squat' the ears to release secreted items?

The shame is the unfortunate inclination for some Malaysians to see things through racist glasses, or invoke racist or jingoistic sentiments to mask the abuses of those whom they considered to be on their side. These are people who are in power, and probably so because their climb to power had been by exploiting racist issues and through harnessing the police as their personal praetorian guards.