Scumbag or victim of society?

Last December, teenager Jiegendran Panir Selvam was detained under the Emergency (Public Order and Crime Prevention) Ordinance (EO) for alleged links with a gang of motorcycle thieves.

Last week, a 15-year-old and his three friends were shot dead by police. Last month, an 18-year-old was fatally shot by the police, and a short while before that, 15-year-old Aminulrasyid Amzah was gunned down.
 
Are our teenagers more criminally inclined? Are our teenagers becoming so violent that the police have to shoot to kill? Or should we examine the real problems that allegedly drive our teenagers to crime?
 
Despite the official statistics depicting a falling crime rate, we regularly read about teenagers being involved in armed robberies. We also know that crime is decreasing because people fail to report criminal acts as they have no confidence in the investigations.
 
So why are so many teenagers shot dead for their alleged involvement in crime? Is it because dead people tell no tales? Why do the police feel that they have to engage teenagers with extreme prejudice?
 
Jiegendran, 17, whose detention order expired last March, subsequently received a Restricted Residence Act order from the Home Ministry. He was forcibly moved to Linggi in Negri Sembilan from Semenyih in Selangor.
 
For Jiegandran and his family, it has been a nightmare to clear his name and they are seeking to rescind the order because of lack of evidence.
 
Very few Malaysians know that the EO is similar to the Internal Security Act (ISA) in that it allows people to be detained without trial.
 
In the words of an activist group, the difference between the ISA and the EO is that the ISA is top down - a minister orders the detention of someone seen as a governmental threat - whereas the EO is bottom-up and is left to police discretion.
 
According to Suaram, the human rights organisation, the EO can be ‘10 times worse than the infamous ISA…’ The police use it to detain or restrict the movements of communists and suspected criminals, when the lack of evidence means it is difficult to convict them.
 
A Suaram co-ordinator said: “We strongly condemn the minister’s decision to pursue the detention of minors and the youth under the Restricted Residence Act. This is an outright abuse of power by the deputy home minister who has been blindly signing the detention orders.”
 
In Jiegandran’s case, the EO has been unlawfully used on a minor.

Desperate situation
 
How many teenagers are there like Jiegandran? What is the percentage of boys, born into poverty, and who become drop-outs whilst in primary school? Is Jiegandran’s case a common phenomenon among Indian Malaysians or is it a nationwide scourge?
 
A report compiled by the Yayasan Strategik Sosial, which is part of the MIC, revealed that 27 percent of 170,000 Indian Malaysian students who are 13- 17 years old, did not complete secondary school in 2001, while 3,000 had no schooling whatsoever.
 
Why are they not at school? Isn’t education compulsory until one is 16 years old? Why did they fail to progress to secondary education? Why did their parents fail to register them for school?
 
Are the parents too poor to send their children to school? Did these parents not register their children at birth, because of illegitimacy, ignorance or because they do not have identity cards?
 
Why does the school not report the children missing if they fail to turn up for extended periods? What happened to the local village head or the community leader? Is he disinterested in his own backyard? Are the neighbours oblivious of their surroundings or are they afraid? If the child’s family members are regular temple-goers, why has the priest no advice to offer?
 
Malaysia’s glittering twin-towers and dreams of the new Warisan Merdeka are of little use if major sections of its community fall beneath the radar of welfare.
 
We are told the economy is booming but for the likes of Jiegandran, our prosperity has come at a price - his freedom, well-being and survival.
 
Without education and skills, how can Jiegandran contribute to the economy? With both mother and father having to work long hours to provide for the family, who remains at home to create a proper family structure and guide him through life?
 
Without opportunities, such as simple vocational training programmes, how can Jiegandran have any aspiration? This is where the lure of earning an income through easy but dishonest means, becomes reality.
 
If Jiegandran is truly a hardened gang member and a thief, is he not the by-product of our society? Is it his fault that he was born into poverty? That he became a school drop-out? That his family appears to be unsupportive?
 
Jiegandran was whisked into exile in Negri Sembilan last May, soon after his 19th birthday. He spent Deepavali alone.
 
For him, life is difficult, traumatic, severely restricted and with several pitfalls. At a time when he could benefit from the support of his family and the community, he must struggle and manage on his own. He is denied both education and a family life.
 
Maybe Jiegandran is really the scum of our community, who turned his back on society and rejected the opportunities extended by various people, to improve his life.
 
Or perhaps, Jiegandran was never offered a lifeline.
 
Only Jiegandran and those closest to him, are aware of the true causes of his desperate situation.
 
So should we show any compassion for him? If we do, we are, in the wider context, helping other teenagers who are in similar circumstances and who deserve a second chance in life.
 
Or should we turn our backs on him because, he is not worthy of our sympathy?
 
Perhaps Jeigandran should consider himself lucky not to have been shot by the police.

 

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MARIAM MOKHTAR is a non-conformist traditionalist from Perak, a bucket chemist and an armchair eco-warrior. In ‘real-speak’, this translates into that she comes from Ipoh, values change but respects culture, is a petroleum chemist and also an environmental pollution-control scientist.