Crime wave puts laid-back Malaysia on edge

ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-s Last updated Jun 17, 2014

A Malaysian policeman checking a motorcyclist’s identification papers at a roadblock during an operation called “Op Cantas Khas” in Kuala Lumpur on August 21, 2013. A wave of lethal shootings is rattling normally laid-back Malaysia and raising new doubts about the much-maligned national police force’s ability to protect the public.

(Fox News) – Whatever the causes, citizens are forming community patrols and barricading entrances to neighbourhoods while anti-crime websites feature videos of angry mobs beating suspected criminals.

A wave of lethal shootings is rattling normally laid-back Malaysia and raising fresh doubts about the ability of the much-maligned national police force to protect the public.

Malaysians and foreign residents alike have long complained of burglars, bag-snatchers and other petty criminals operating with apparent impunity in the otherwise peaceful multi-ethnic nation.

But near-daily gun violence in recent weeks in a country with tough firearms restrictions has sown fear and confusion, and triggered a weekend police crackdown widely considered long overdue.

“To be honest, I am really scared,” said a French expatriate, 29, whose hand was nearly severed last month in a mugging by two knife-wielding assailants in an upscale Kuala Lumpur neighbourhood.

“The image of wealth and safety here is totally untrue,” he said.

Dozens of shootings have been reported since April, many fatal, but the causes and the culprits in the sudden upsurge remain unclear.

Home Minister Zahid Hamidi, who oversees the national police force, believes there is a turf war involving 2,600 criminal suspects released since 2011 when the long-serving government was pressured into abolishing a controversial law allowing preventive detention.

“Each has his hardcore followers. If each of the released detainees had 10 right-hand men, this translated to 26,000 who are with them,” he said.

But the opposition dismisses that as a smokescreen to hide police ineptitude, while social media hum with darker conspiracy theories of battles between corrupt police factions and their underworld proxies over criminal rackets.

The crisis is fuelling calls for reform of the Royal Malaysia Police, which has long been dogged by accusations of corruption, incompetence and bias toward the regime which has been in power for 56 years.

“There is not a strong enough deterrent. If it seems you can get away with crime, criminals will try, and they are,” said Richard Wee, chairman of Safer Malaysia, a grassroots group pressing for improved policing.

“And (police) corruption is the big elephant in the room.”