London murder case shows public spaces for women still unsafe
PETALING JAYA: The high-profile case of Sarah Everard’s murder in London saw a wave of women taking to social media to discuss global misogyny and women’s safety in public spaces.
The fears of experiencing gender-based violence in public spaces is no exception for Malaysia. Safety activist K Balasupramaniam noted that cases of being harassed on the streets were actually more common in the country than the UK.
Among others, he cited the murder of Audrey Melissa, who was abducted, raped and strangled on her way to school in 1999, and Chee Gaik Yap, who was stalked and eventually raped in 2006 during a jog in the neighbourhood.
While not all cases in the country ended in death, Balasupramaniam said there were still many that went unreported today.
“Now, with everyone focusing on Covid-19 and staying out of the streets, it could be a nightmare if someone was abducted and murdered. We might not be aware of it as we are still in a lockdown,” he told FMT.
He advised the public to always keep a friend or family member informed on their whereabouts late at night, so they know if someone was missing.
However, Balasupramaniam stressed that “it takes two hands to clap” and that Malaysia had to educate men to better respect women, beginning from young.
“We still see the mindset of how a woman should be prepared, if not a man will ‘attack’. This is not what we should be teaching. Men must play a bigger role to protect our women.
“Otherwise, cases like Sarah’s will reappear. The time and place may be different, but the opportunity and crime will always be the same,” he said.
Everard was kidnapped and murdered by a police officer on her way home from a friend’s house on March 3. It led to over a thousand people gathering at a vigil near where the 33-year-old woman was last seen, where news reports told of police handcuffing and dragging several women away last Saturday.
Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO) capacity building officer Hannah Reshma Jambunathan said public harassment was a “universal experience”, which explained why Everard’s case had struck a chord with women across the world, including Malaysians.
According to a WAO and Vase.ai survey invollving 1,008 Malaysians last December, more than a third of the respondents had experienced stalking and felt unsafe being alone in public. Of the number, 69% did not lodge a police report, with nearly half saying it was because they did not believe the police could help.
“Public harassment is one of the key ways in which women in Malaysia face gender-based violence every day,” said Jambunathan.
“There needs to be a shift in societal and cultural attitudes in understanding gender inequalities in Malaysia, in order to understand that the responsibility of a woman’s safety in public is not solely her individual burden.”
She said the enactment of an anti-stalking law and a sexual harassment act, and a proper redress mechanism were vital in ensuring women’s security in Malaysia.
Winnie Yee, president of the Sabah Women’s Action Resource Group, said the many unreported cases were a result of women normalising that they always had to look after their surroundings.
Yee said the nation’s criminal justice system – which mirrored the one in the UK – failed to provide justice for women. This was because the basic approach of “innocent until proven guilty” was still applied to public harassment cases, which often occurs without witnesses around.
She said the number of cases that made it to court was a clear indicator of the divide between “how many incidents happen in everyday life and how many actually get to the police station”.
“Our society and lawmakers must recognise that violence against women is a continuum, it starts from catcalling, to touching, stalking, assaulting and then killing. It is all connected in this special category of crime, there has to be a reform,” she said. - FMT
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