A week after the incident, Federal Territories Minister Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor said his advise that women should dress ‘comot’ (shabbily) to avoid unwanted attention was just a joke.
However, as a Minister, Tengku Adnan should know better that some jokes are not funny.
First of all, dressing shabbily to avoid unwanted attention only fortifies the idea of victim blaming. As a leader, we expect Tengku Adnan to help us to dispel the myths that women invite rape or sexual harassment by dressing provocatively. But instead, what he has done was a complete disservice.
Moreover, his statement was not made in a private function, but during a TN50 dialogue. How did he know that some perverts would not take his so-called joke seriously?
Even if it is a joke, does it mean that it is not sexual harassment?
Police received 1,585 reports on sexual harassment in 2015 and 1,525 reports in 2016. That is an average of 4 cases a day.
However, out of the reports received, only 619 cases or 39% were charged in 2015 and merely 281 or 18.4% cases in 2016. Is it because the investigating officers all think like Tengku Adnan? That the harassment the victims complained of were merely jokes?
Even more miserable is the conviction rate. The prosecution only managed to secure 185 convictions in 2015 and only 18 in 2016! Did most of the Defendants conveniently use the excuse offered by Tengku Adnan? That what they said or did were merely jokes?
If only 6% of the complaints result in actual punishment, how do we want to encourage more victims to lodge report to combat sexual harassment?
So stop using “joke” as a cheap excuse, retract the statement and apologise!