{"id":5541,"date":"2013-08-21T14:49:51","date_gmt":"2013-08-21T06:49:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/?p=5541"},"modified":"2013-08-21T14:49:51","modified_gmt":"2013-08-21T06:49:51","slug":"crime-has-nothing-to-do-with-skin-colour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/crime-has-nothing-to-do-with-skin-colour\/","title":{"rendered":"Crime has nothing to do with skin colour"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Tay Tian Yan, translated by Soong Phui Jee<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have a habit of finding out offenders’ or suspects’ racial identities first instead of the course of it when I read crime stories.<\/p>\n

Just like reading a road accident news, I will take note of the car model first.<\/p>\n

It might be considered not a good habit. Those adhering political correctness would say that crime is crime, it has nothing to do with racial background.<\/p>\n

Or, they might say that it is a kind of latent racism that links crime to a particular race.<\/p>\n

Just like an unwritten provision of the Home Ministry in the past, newspapers were not allowed to publish the racial identity of offenders or suspects.<\/p>\n

I used to be a dissident at a dialogue with Home Ministry officials.<\/p>\n

I said that the objective of the authorities was good. It was meant to avoid people from linking crimes to a particular racial group as the move might lead to the formation of racial prejudice.<\/p>\n

However, hiding the racial identity of offenders or suspects was a move of concealing facts and even worse, it might affect readers’ judgements on social environment.<\/p>\n

Readers must know the real situation to form environmental awareness and raise vigilance accordingly to protect themselves and their families.<\/p>\n

Communication theory taught me so.<\/p>\n

For instance, knowing the car models that always lose control and the roads having frequent accidents could help readers make reasonable prevention.<\/p>\n

Appropriate and proper disclosure is good as stereotypes could be prevented only when errors are avoided.<\/p>\n

For instance, people in the past always thought that theft, robbery and homicide involved mostly foreign workers, particularly those from Indonesia.<\/p>\n

After the formation of such a stereotype, people try to avoid foreign workers and take a detour whenever they see foreign workers, as if they have hidden a\u00a0parang<\/em>\u00a0behind their backs and would slash anyone near them.<\/p>\n

However, statistics tell us that the ratio of crimes involving foreign workers is actually very low. In contrast, the ratio of foreign workers being robbed, cheated and abused is high.<\/p>\n

Perhaps one day, we would no longer be able to recruit any foreign workers as they are safer at home and it is not worthy to risk their lives here.<\/p>\n

Today, newspapers no longer hide the racial identity of offenders or suspects. We can now see more truth and most crimes are actually committed by Malaysian citizens.<\/p>\n

Indian suspects are wanted by the police for involving in open robberies and cold-blooded murders. And the five gang members being shot dead by the police in a recent raid on an apartment are all Indians, too.<\/p>\n

It made an impression that crimes involved a particular skin colour.<\/p>\n

However, the arrested suspects believed to have involved in a series of shop robberies were Malays while the suspects of a bomb explosion incident that killed a primary a school clerk in Tumpat were also Malays.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the suspect of shooting dead Ambank founder Hussain Ahmad Najadi is a Chinese man nicknamed Sei Ngan Chai while the three suspects, including a woman, being arrested for involving in the robbery cum murder of a beautician in Johor are also Chinese.<\/p>\n

Crimes have nothing to do with skin colour. However, they have similar backgrounds originated from the deep social problems of the Malaysian society.<\/p>\n

Drugs, gangs, money snatching and revenge taking are the causes of crimes, while the lack of education, economic marginalisation and cultural backwardness are the nutrients for crimes.<\/p>\n

The skin colour of a racial group should not be linked to crimes. However, the education, economy and culture of a racial group are having direct relations to their crime rates. Only by addressing the problem from here, we might be able to curb the sources of crimes.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0The views expressed in this article are the personal opinion of the writer and this article first appeared in mysinchew.com<\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Tay Tian Yan, translated by Soong Phui Jee I have a habit of finding out offenders’ or suspects’ racial identities first instead of the course of it when I read crime stories. Just like reading a road accident news, I will take note of the car model first. It might be considered not a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[283],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5542,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5541\/revisions\/5542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}