If crime is down, why the record arrests? Malaysia's SHOW arrests & Zahid's ambitions

KUALA LUMPUR - As Malaysia’s crime rate spiralled in recent years, particularly in the last 12 to 18 months, the ruling BN engaged in a strategy of blatant denial.

Crime was, in fact, insisted the then Home Minister, Hishamuddin Hussein, and the police, reducing. Soon everybody in Malaysia was, or personally knew, a victim.

The government responded by engaging in a marketing campaign to change public ‘perception’, instead of accepting and fighting crime. Kim Jong-Un would have been proud. The BN felt they had no choice. With the 13th General Election approaching, they had to pretend that there was no crime.

Criminals themselves must have been bemused by the police approach. They wouldn’t be arrested because that would push the arrest stats up, meaning crime was up. There were multiple reports of victims being discouraged to lodge reports by policemen at the duty desk. Alice, truly, was in Wonderland.

Months after insisting that crime wasn’t rising, the police are engaged in perhaps their biggest ever crackdown on crime. Upwards of 5,000 men have been arrested.

Racial profiling

Thanks to prevalent racial profiling, they are mostly Indians. For most of them their crime is having a tattoo. They are picked up en masse at roadblocks and on raids, and transported to unknown locations.

Where could be the police possibly be storing all these tattooed men? Spread out in already over-flowing, ill-run, drug-ridden Malaysian prisons? Unlikely. In police lock-ups? No space. On an uninhabited island? It makes sense. There certainly would be enough space. It would only lack an unhinged experimental geneticist.

Who are these men who have been arrested? What is their age-range? How many have tattoos? How many have prison records? How many are innocent? Have there been any fatalities?

There is no information forthcoming from the police or the Home Ministry. All that has been released is a list of made-up looking names from the Home Ministry which the police themselves have disavowed. All the names were Indian and had the names of various places attached. Apparently this makes them gangsters. Well then, what about Bagan Datoh Zahid, Pekan Najib, Kota Setar Mahathir, and Sungei Siput Samy Vellu? (Note : One of those four actually is a gangster.)

Zahid and the Umno election

What the Home Ministry is engaged in is a public relations exercise to assuage public anger against them, while achieving very little.

Zahid Hamidi, the Home Minister, is standing in the Umno Elections. He had to do something, one assumes, and the higher profile the better. So we are presented with a hardliner’s breakfast of manacled Indians bearing tattoos, from swastikas (a Hindu religious symbol) to, one supposes, Popeye.

It is not clear how all this will help reduce crime in the long-term. The triads are left untouched. The corrupt laugh to the bank, hoping they won’t be robbed on the way.

PKR’s vice-president N Surendran was entirely accurate when he described the arrests as Zahid’s drama.

And the show goes on.

MAILBAG