Act against ‘period spot checks’, urge women’s groups

 

Former students have alleged on social media they were asked to prove they were having their period.

PETALING JAYA: Women’s rights groups have called on the education ministry and Mara to address the issue of “period spot checks” occurring in public schools.

The All Women’s Action Society (AWAM), Sisters in Islam (SIS) and Pertubuhan Pembangunan Kendiri Wanita dan Gadis (WOMEN:girls) said an investigative task force should be set up to collect evidence on the issue from students.

In a statement, they said the results of the task force must be shared with the relevant authorities, including child rights and women’s rights NGOs, to form robust policies against sexual harassment and abuse of power in schools.

If such incidents continued without proper investigation, they said, schools would end up “being institutions that indoctrinate generation after generation of students with bullying and abusive behaviour and, where the survivors are concerned, a lifetime of trauma”.

The statement added that failure to address this would ensure that Malaysia would “never be able to achieve gender equality, not to mention producing an entire generation of dysfunctional adults”.

Over the last few days, social media has been rife with former students detailing their personal experiences of religious teachers instructing girls to prove they were on their period to prevent students from skipping their prayers.

This involved the students having their private parts groped and being forced to remove their underwear to show their menstrual pads, which mainly occurred in boarding schools.

Some teachers were alleged to have publicly shamed students for being in romantic relationships by putting up their love letters on school notice boards, while others had instructed male students to monitor their female classmates for wearing tight clothing.

Several accounts also told of teachers molesting both male and female students during spot checks, as well as physically abusing their private parts as part of disciplinary punishment.

“This alarming culture of abuse of power is not new in Malaysia, but when they are happening in our school system, all of us – the government, authorities, parents and society – need to sit up, take notice and take action,” the groups said.

They said the alleged “degrading and abusive treatments” could be considered criminal offences under the Sexual Offences Against Children Act 2017 and Section 354 of the Penal Code, which made it punishable by law. - FMT