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A video clip, taken on MMS format using a mobile phone, has now come to light. It shows how a naked female detainee was sadistically punished by being forced to perform ear-squats, by a police officer, in what looks like a locker room of a police station.

It is a disgusting movie of one human being, having forsaken all sense of decency, treating another human being (over whom she had control) in a degrading, humiliating and wanton manner. Nothing could possibly have been gained in that nauseating episode, except only the perverse feeling of having power over another person.

All Malaysians should view the video clip, and ask ourselves how we have allowed things to come to this stage, and in what disastrous direction we are heading.

This rare piece of material confirms what Malaysians have heard and believed all these while about the inhumane and degrading treatment of persons in custody.

Some may like to suggest that this is a rare occurrence. However, does anyone really and honestly believe that this is just an isolated incident? To argue so, one would have to say that the many horror stories that have from time to time been told are nothing more than pure lies, made up by so many persons of different persuasions, at different places and different times; and that these persons, although being strangers to one another, must have somehow conspired to mislead our people by telling elaborate tales of a frighteningly similar pattern.

When the Abu Ghraib pictures surfaced, the Malaysian government and the Malaysian people joined the rest of the world, quite rightly, in expressing outrage and demanding an immediate, independent, thorough, transparent and accountable inquiry. We now cannot demand anything less, with regard to our own domestic scandal.

This must become the final wake-up call to the police and the Malaysian authorities. If we persist in our inadequate action, if we continue our slumber in a state of repeated denials, if we downplay the magnitude of the problem, and if we do not bravely acknowledge that there is a huge problem here that is a result of decades of neglect and gradual decay; soon it will be too late to prevent a complete plunge into a police state, a fear that Minister Dato Seri Nazri Aziz has recently voiced in a commendable fashion.

For obvious reasons, those who have suffered custodial abuse usually did so in silence and out of public gaze. Malaysians can bring a certain amount of justice to these persons, by demanding radical changes in the way in which incidents of this nature are impartially investigated from now onwards. The model suggested by the Royal Police Commission, in the form of the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (“IPCMC”), must now immediately take shape. There are of course honest and dedicated police offices within the force, who care about the image of the police and who would like to belong to a force that they can be proud of. They must come to realise and accept that the only way to restore public confidence and their professional pride is to cease resisting the formation of the IPCMC, and instead embrace that approach.

Recent police responses to complaints against them, which include a nocturnal raid aptly described by Minister Nazri as harassment of the complainants, are far from appropriate. It is crucial for this videotaped incident, and other incidents that have been brought to light, to be impartially investigated, not by the police, but by an independent body that can enjoy the confidence of the people.

Malaysians cannot be content, or expected, to listen to the same futile song again and again. This time, the authorities must give the Malaysian people immediate, satisfactory and groundbreaking answers and solutions. The shame must not continue.

Yeo Yang Poh
Chariman
Bar Council 

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