Malaysia and Malaysians never cease to amaze. In this wonderfully complex and confusing society of ours, contradictions come flying at you at a rate of one a minute, or even faster on better days. One of the most paradoxical things about our society is the way we deal (or rather, not deal) with the question of violence.

Malaysia's political parties, NGOs and social movements continue to moan and groan about the level of violence on our television screens and cinemas  and quite rightly so.

We complain about the effects of violence on our children, worried about the possibility that they may somehow be affected by what they see and turn into potentially violent psychopaths in turn. Time and again we read and hear of reports by NGOs about the increasingly high levels of violence that the Malaysian public is exposed to: the number of simulated killings, murders, rapes, accidents and acts of random violence that spill from the TV sets into their living rooms for instance.

Yet the very same social movements and political parties see no problem whatsoever when calling for the most violent and public forms of punishment on those whom they regard as criminals. Not too long ago, the country was rife with talk of whipping for illegal immigrants who have been caught in the country.(1)

Issues politicised again

Never mind the fact that many of these 'illegals' were probably forced to come to the country for the simple reason that they could not find work and a decent life in their own countries.

Never mind the fact that many of them were also probably trying to escape political persecution and a life of chaos and violence where they came from.

The crowd bayed for blood, and our local media was full of talk about how these 'illegals' should be whipped and scarred for life. Nothing whips up a frenzy like a good bloody whipping, it seems.

Whipping is now back in the picture again. This time round, the main recipients of such public justice will be sex offenders and those guilty of incest and rape.

Already we have seen how the various political parties and interest groups have come to the fore, each trying to out-do each other with more and more outlandish proposals to resolve the problem. As the 'debate' spirals out of control, it has become increasingly difficult to see the line that is meant to separate the government from the opposition: across the political and social spectrum, the call for violent public punishment can be heard.

What complicates matters is the way in which the whole issue of domestic rape, violence and incest has been politicised as well. While some groups claim  somewhat outlandishly according to a skewered logic that is difficult to comprehend  that it is 'excessive' religiosity that is somehow 'responsible' for these crimes, others have opted for an equally bizarre and twisted line of argument, claiming that such violent forms of punishment are the only cure for these problems. What is actually a serious and complex social phenomenon has become hostage to politics once again.

Crime and punishment

Lest I be misunderstood (again), allow me to point out that in no way do I condone or belittle incest and child abuse. These are heinous crimes indeed, made all the more so by the simple fact that more often than not the victims themselves tend to be the most vulnerable members of society. The children who have been abused thus are often traumatised for life, and made to feel 'guilty' for their part in their own abuse.

Often a vicious circle is initiated: those who are abused are themselves turned into potential abusers in later life. The real question when addressing the problem of child abuse and incest is therefore not simply to punish the abuser, but to understand the nature of the crime in order to break this circle of violence and by doing so trying our best to end it.

But this can only happen when we look at domestic violence, rape and child abuse in its proper social context and ask ourselves the difficult and embarrassing question: Why is it that a society like ours  which prides itself for its conservative values  produces such phenomenon in the first place? How can a society that talks of its much-lauded 'Asian values' produce such problems? And is there something about the nature of our society that breeds this sort of mentality?

One obvious feature of our society  like many Asian societies  is its conservatism.

Ours is a society based on conservative values, which are in turn propped up by the institutions and norms of Patriarchy. In such a society, children are taught from an early age to have blind respect and obedience to their parents. We still have not evolved a discourse of rights and entitlements that endow the children of our society a sense of identity, dignity, autonomy and rights. Is it a surprise, then, that when children are abused by their elders they feel they have no right to speak up for themselves and defend their rights and their bodies?

Unless and until we develop an understanding of rights that encompasses the whole of society, including children and the weakest sections of the populace, such practices are bound to continue unhindered. Parents will still continue to think that their children are an extension of themselves, and feel that they have the right to decide what to do with them.

(In many cases, parents in Malaysia still decide what professions their children should take up in later life, and educate them accordingly. If children can't even choose their path in life, what hope is there for them to decide what they can and cannot do with their bodies?)

The root of the problem is therefore social, and not individual. While it is the individual perpetrator of violence who is at fault, it remains a fact that each individual is also a reflection of the society he/she inhabits and is a product of.

To suddenly turn on the criminal and punish him violently in public with punishments like whipping is a convenient way for us  society  to abdicate our own responsibility for the creation of the world we live in. But we cannot and should not be let off so easily. Such public punishments are a way for society to alienate and exteriorise 'problematic' individuals from their midst. But the real problem is far more complex, and it rests within society, and not just the individual.

Catharsis and alienation

Those who call for public punishments like whipping, amputation and beheadings have probably never seen such public acts of violence before. Being both an academic and a human rights activist, I have the unfortunate 'honour' to say that I have. The worst thing about such violent public punishments is not the violence itself, but the fact that there will always be a crowd to watch it. What is worse, in so many recorded cases, the crowd actually enjoys it.

History is full of examples of mobs who seem to be drawn to violence. In the days before violence was normalised and made routine thanks to the popular media, crowds would gather to watch the hanging of criminals, the whipping, stoning, drowning and burning of witches and the mass murder of political dissidents. This still happens today, in countries like China and some Arab states where political dissidents are often shot in public, before an appreciative crowd.

But if watching violence on TV and in the cinemas has a negative effect on the viewers themselves, one can only imagine the amount of psychological damage that is done to people who watch real prisoners being whipped, tortured and killed in public.

Violence dehumanises us and diminishes our capacity for empathy and identifying with the Other. To normalise violence and make it a routine public procedure merely mechanises the process even further, making public violence a matter-of-fact phenomenon that is almost comparable with going to watch a movie. Yet the spectacle of public violence (be it in the form of torture and executions or even violent sports like boxing) also brutalises the society that takes part in it.

Staged-managed events

What makes the spectacle of public violence even more unpalatable is the sight of hundreds of ordinary people lining up to watch it, as if it was some kind of 'show'. But that, in effect, is what public punishments really are: stage-managed and orchestrated events that are meant to attract large crowds who are keen on public displays of pain and suffering.

(For what kind of morally-upright individual would willingly go to an execution or public whipping to watch and gloat at the punishment of someone else, no matter how guilty the person might be?)

Public executions and tortures have also been an effective tool used by states and governments to domesticate the public. It serves as an open forum for social catharsis, where the public is allowed to vent out its anger at the state and redirect it against some individual. In cases of political executions, those killed are often innocent people themselves  unionists, intellectual dissidents, student activists, religious minorities. Yet the crowd does not care about these technical and legal niceties, as long as blood and bodies are on show.

One of the few governments that consciously took punishment away from the public sphere and made it a private affair was the revolutionary government of post-1979 Iran. As Darius Rejali has shown in his book Torture and modernity, (2) the ideologues of the Iranian revolution were revolted by the public displays of torture and violence that typified the corrupt and brutal regime of Shah Pehlavi of Iran. They understood that the Shah was using such public displays of violence as a means to control and domesticate society, making them accustomed to routine state violence and oppression.

For the Islamist intellectuals of the Iranian revolution, crime and punishment was essentially a process of reform and re-education. This they did by making punishment a private affair and trying to correct the psycho-social aberrations of the criminal himself. Thus contrary to the demonised image of Iran in the post-revolutionary period, the Iranian system was actually more humane and caring.

Problem shared

This is where we have singularly failed in Malaysia and the Asean region as a whole. In our search for scapegoats and convenient targets for our own inherited and self-inflicted ills, we often turn to others instead. Today the trope of the 'domestic child molester' (real though he/she may be) has become the bogeyman of our society.

The outburst of moral condemnation and near-hysterical calls for public retribution really show how we, as a society, cannot come to terms with the weaknesses and contradictions within ourselves. In our mad rush to cast the first stone, we have forgotten the fact that violence and abuse in our society today are a problem shared by all.

It was we who made this society what it is, with its junk pop culture of cheap sensationalism and pornographic violence.

If child abusers and rapists run amok all around us, we need to ask ourselves, who created the climate for them to thrive in the first place?

Endnotes:

  1. It was reported recently (Wed 24 May, New Straits Times, Immigration warns illegal immigrants again) that a mandatory punishment of 12 months jail and whipping will be meted out on all illegal immigrants once the Immigration Act 1953 is enforced. Once gazetted, the law will allow immigration officials to stop and detain illegal immigrants coming into the country. Those found guilty will be whipped, and this applies to even first-time offenders. Similar laws exist in Brunei and Singapore, and Malaysia is not unique in this case.

  2. See: Darius Rejali, Torture and modernity: self, state and society in modern Iran. Westview Press, 1994.