Call on Abdullah to designate a Minister with the task within 12 months to  reduce traumatic crimes such as robberies, house breakings, car jackings and snatch thefts and the people’s fear of crime and end the reputation of Johore Bahru and Klang Valley as crime “black areas” or be dismissed for failure

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Media Statement

by Lim Kit Siang  
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(Parliament, Saturday) Another life has been snuffed out, most probably as a result of the rampant crime of snatch theft,  in Johore Baru yesterday, when a salesgirl and part-time student, Chang Shu Chen, 18, was found dead by the roadside about 1 km from her home.

There was another victim of the rampant traumatic crime of snatch theft in Johore Baru yesterday – a 32-year-old purchasing executive who suffered parang-slashes when two men on a motorcycle tried to grab her handbag outside her Taman Johor Jaya home, requiring 28 stitches on her right hand from a 10 cm wound.

In the past two weeks, Malaysians have been battered with one report after another of the senseless killings from traumatic crimes, whether 18-year-old Tunku Abdul Rahman (TAR) College student Lee Kean Yip from Ipoh, murdered in a  snatch theft incident in Wangsa Maju, Kuala Lumpur;  make-up artist Indra Shahril Mohd Salleh murdered in his shop in Johore Baru;  pump attendant, Chai Joon Boi, 54, robbed and murdered in his house in Serian, Sarawak; 25-year-old sales girl Ng Chew Lim who sustained fatal  internal head injuries when she fell down the staircase in a scuffle with a drug addict at the Berjaya Megamall shopping centre in Kuantan.

What is the use of talking about Vision 2020 becoming a fully developed nation when life has become very cheap in Malaysia, with traumatic crimes a common occurrence and the fear of crime and their personal safety and their love ones, whether in the streets, public places or their homes, a haunting and abiding nightmare?

How can the government expect to succeed in making Malaysia an investment centre or an international hub of academic excellence to attract foreign students when the government is incapable performing its most fundamental duty – to ensure the personal safety and security of its citizens and visitors?

The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi should designate a Minister with the task within 12 months to reduce traumatic crimes such as robberies, house breakings, car jackings and snatch thefts and the people’s fear of crime and end the reputation of Johor Baru and the Klang Valley as the crime “black areas”  – or be dismissed for failure in carrying out the assignment.

It is time that the government provide and assume political leadership to restore the badly-shattered public confidence in police capability, effectiveness and professionalism to reduce crime and the fear of crime in the country, particularly in “black areas” like Johore Baru, Kuala Lumpur, Petaling Jaya and Penang.

It is no use the Police claiming that statistics have shown that incidence of traumatic crimes such as robberies, house breakings, car jacking and snatch thefts have come down, when there is such a high percentage of the traumatic crime cases which are not reported to the police, either because of lack of confidence in the police or the people-unfriendly conditions for lodging police reports.

The people, on their part, should assert their rights  to demand full  government and police accountability to restore to citizens their most fundamental human right  -  personal safety and to be free from the fear of crime – and to extend their fullest co-operation with the authorities to ensure that the reduction of crime and the end of the people’s fear of crime must henceforth be the first national priority.

A public meeting/forum on what the people and civic organisations can do in the campaign to  reduce crime and wipe out the the fear of crime will be held in Ipoh at Hotel Excelsior on Thursday, 17^th August at 7.30 pm. 

I hope there will be a good attendance at this public meeting/forum, which is one of the initiatives of Lee Mook Kwai, 55, who want to ensure that his son, Kean Yip, who had scored 11 As and was studying IT in Tunku Abdul Rahman College in Kuala Lumpur did not die in vain and to help ensure that other parents would be spared  the pain and sufferings he and his family had gone through and still undergoing.

(12/08/2006)