WILL Nazri Officially Apologized to the Family of the School Girl who was Raped WHILE The Alabama Legislature has officially apologized to an elderly black woman who was raped

WILL Nazri Officially Apologized to the Family of the School Girl who was Raped The Alabama Legislature has officially apologized to an elderly black woman who was raped nearly seven decades ago by a gang of white men as she walked home from church.

The Senate gave final approval on Thursday on a voice vote to a resolution that expresses "deepest sympathy and deepest regrets" to Recy Taylor, now 91 and living in Florida. She said that she believes the men who attacked her in 1944 are dead but that she still wanted an apology from the state of Alabama.

Rahim not prosecuted for RM40 million corruption in the nineties in return for relinquishing all government, statutory and party positions?

In Parliament yesterday, I had asked for the government response to Monday’s Open Letter to the Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Ismail Omar by former Kuala Lumpur CID chief Datuk Mat Zain Ismail who had expressed lack of confidence that Tan Sri Abdul Rahim Tamby Chik would be prosecuted over the Carcosa sex video scandal because of the ultimate involvement of Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail as Attorney-General.

Mat Zain was the police officer who headed the initial investigation into the 1998 case of Anwar Ibrahim’s “black eye” assault while in police custody in Bukit Aman but whose recommendation that the then Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Rahim Noor be prosecuted for criminal assault against Anwar had been ignored until the subsequent establishment of a Royal Commission of Inquiry.

As KL CID chief in 1999, he handled the four police reports lodged by Anwar Ibrahim in Sungai Buloh prison, one of which was on the abuses of power by the then Prime Minister Tun Mahathir, the late Mohtar Abdullah who was Attorney-General and Gani Patail who was head of prosecution AG’s Chambers, although the Anti-Corruption Agency had compiled enough evidence to prove a “prima facie” case against Rahim for corruption involving money and shares worth RM40 million.

The questions which Mat Zain posed, and which I asked for answer in Parliament yesterday, were:

• Persoalan yang tidak kurang pentingnya ialah adakah Peguam Negara mempunyai kuasa untuk “indemnify” kesalahan jenayah mana-mana orang berdasarkan pertimbangan Politik?.

• Adakah Peguam Negara berhak melepaskan wang Rakyat RM 40 juta sebegitu mudah untuk Rahim menikmatinya tanpa sebarang tindakan.

• Adakah ini sesuatu yang adil kepada Rakyat sedangkan Peguam Negara yang telah mengesahkan bahawa Rahim memperolehi harta sedemikian banyak menerusi salahguna kuasa dan rasuah.

Earlier in his Open Letter, Mat Zain alleged that Rahim had not be prosecuted for corruption as the Attorney-General had “indemnified” him from all his crimes in return for Rahim’s agreement to resign from all government, statutory and political party positions.

In his reply in Parliament yesterday in the winding-up of the Prime Minister’s Department during the committee stage of the debate for the second 2010 supplementary estimates, Nazri replied that the Attorney-General had no powers to indemnify any person for his criminal action based on political considerations.

However, he asked for time to investigate and respond to Mat Zain’s allegations that Rahim Tamby Chik had not been prosecuted in the nineties for corruption involving RM40 million in return for relinquishing all government, statutory and party positions.

Not only Mat Zain and MPs but all Malaysians await Nazri’s anwer to Mat Zain’s allegations.

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The House approved the resolution last month. It now goes to Gov. Robert Bentley, who said on Thursday he's not personally familiar with details of the case, but sees no reason why he wouldn't sign it.

The resolution by Democratic state Rep. Dexter Grimsley says the failure to prosecute the men was "morally abhorrent and repugnant." He has said police bungled the investigation and harassed Taylor, and local leaders recently acknowledged that her attackers escaped prosecution in part because of racism.

Taylor was 24 when she was confronted by seven men who forced her into their car at knife and gun-point and drove her to a deserted grove of trees where six of the men raped her in Abbeville in southeastern Alabama. She was then left on the side of the road in an isolated area.

Two all-white, all-male grand juries refused to indict the suspects after the attack.

Recy Taylor's brother, 74-year-old Robert Corbitt, said law enforcement authorities tried to blame the attack on his sister. He said his family was threatened after the attack, his sister's house was firebombed and his father had to guard the house.

"I'm so glad they (the Legislature) decided to do the right thing," Corbitt said.

Taylor is in poor health, Corbitt said, but he hopes she will come back to Abbeville by Mother's Dayin May. Grimsley said he hopes to present her with a copy of the resolution at that time.

Grimsley said the apology shows Alabama officials were able to do the right thing on a racial matter.

"I think it's going to take things like this for the state to move forward" from the racial turmoil of the past, he said.

Grimsley said he pushed the apology through the Legislature for Taylor.

"I just knew I had to do something for her while she's still here," he said.

Taylor's story, along with those of other black women attacked by white men during the civil rights era, is told in "At the Dark End of the Street," a book by Danielle McGuire, a professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. Activists including Rosa Parks took up the causes of Taylor and others, but their efforts were later overshadowed by other civil rights battles.

Ghosts do not die. That is the power of a phantom. You can bury of the cases to the chanting of the prosecutor's fraudulent funeral rites, but its restless spirit keeps rattling through the haunted house of the UMNO Party's premier family. The latest rattle, in which the shocking revelations that Prime Minister Najib Razak and his wife Rosmah Mansor were involved in hatching sodomy accusations against Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim  Ghani Patail has the chance to go down in his nation's history as either a colossal waste of a promise, or as the exorcist who rid Malaysia of the ghost of all  the ghost ., the then chief minister of Malacca, Abdul Rahim Thamby Chik, was reported to have raped a 15-year-old schoolgirl (under Malaysian law, sex with a minor constitutes statutory rape). Lim Guan Eng, currently the chief minister of Penang and the then MP for Kota Melaka, spoke out against the rape of a minor after the girl’s  .grandmother-cum-guardian, who was also Lim’s constituent, turned to him for help.

However, far from deserving justice, both Lim and the schoolgirl received their “dues”. Lim was jailed for three years for speaking up against the rape while the girl was given three years “protective custody”. As for Rahim, because of the rape and pending corruption charges, he was forced to resign, after a 12-year stint as Malacca’s chief minister.

But the judiciary saw Rahim escape punishment for a crime committed; this came about after the public prosecutor withdrew the charge citing lack of evidence. The corruption charges against Rahim were also dropped.

The travesty of justice is such that on Feb 28, 1995, Lim was thrown into jail after he was charged under the Sedition Act for prompting “disaffection with the administration of Malaysia”.

On March 17 the same year, he was slapped with another charge under the Printing Presses and Publications Act for “maliciously printing” a pamphlet containing “false information”, specifically that Lim had used the term “imprisoned victim” to describe the schoolgirl who was raped.

As a result of his trying to seek justice for the rape survivor, Lim was barred from holding public office for five years, making him ineligible to contest in the 2004 general election.

As for the underage rape survivor, she was initially detained for 10 years without parental consent. She was subsequently sentenced to three years “protective custody” in a house for “wayward girls”. During Lim’s trial, the girl gave evidence that she had sex with a minister.

With such lecherous politicians in our midst, the safety of girls and women – be they our sisters, daughters, mothers and foreign female workers – is at risk. There is no telling which politician is waiting to sexually assault the girls and women in this country. What is annoying is the fact that the crime is easily dismissed by threatening and buying the silence of the victim.

In Rais’ case, if the rape had never taken place as he claimed, then what made his domestic helper of eight years to suddenly pack her bags and leave for home in Indonesia? If he has been such a kind and generous man as his former domestic helper claimed when retracting her allegation of rape, the question of her quitting her job would not arise. There is no doubt something is amiss here, no matter how much Rais denies it.

In the case of Rahim, he was never convicted and continues to enjoy life while Lim spent three years in jail and the the rape survivor was sentenced to three years in a house for “wayward girls”. What wrong did the girl do to end up in a house for wayward girls while the perpetrator, Rahim, walked a free man? Where was justice when it was desperately needed?

The public editor of the New York Times, Arthur Brisbane, sided with readers whoexpressed outrage over a story in the paper about a brutal gang rape in Texas.

The story, which was published last Tuesday, focused on the rape of an 11-year-old girl by 18 boys and men in Cleveland, Texas. But critics excoriated the Times for, in their view, blaming the girl for the attack.

In a blog post on Friday, Brisbane said he agreed.

"My assessment is that the outrage is understandable," he wrote. "The story dealt with a hideous crime but addressed concerns about the ruined lives of the perpetrators without acknowledging the obvious: concern for the victim."

Brisbane pointed to the sections that drew the most ire, where residents were quoted expressing worry about the burden the men will have to carry because of their crimes, and where the girl was described as often "dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s."

"If indeed that is the only sentiment to be found in this community - and I find that very hard to believe - it becomes important to report on that as well by seeking out voices of professional authorities or dissenting community members who will at least address, and not ignore, the plight of the young girl involved," Brisbane wrote.

The Times initially defended the story in a statement, saying the writer of the article, James C. McKinley, was merely reporting what he had been told. But the paper's standards editor, Phillip Corbett, seemed to walk back that defense in an interview with Brisbane, saying that the Times "could have done more to provide more context" to stress the fact that the victim was not being blamed.

* Unwelcome sexual behaviour like physical contact

INVESTIGATION PAPERS ON SOI LEK’S SEX VIDEO TO BE SENT TO AG

KUALA LUMPUR – The investigation papers on the distribution of the sex video involving MCA President Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek will be submitted to the Attorney-General’s Chambers soon.

Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein said Dr Chua lodged a police report after being informed by a colleague on the distribution of envelopes containing two DVDs in several areas in Batu Pahat, Johor, which was intended to smear his image.

Following the report, police conducted an investigation and the investigation papers submitted to the Attorney-General’s Chambers, before the Attorney-General ordered for further investigation, he said in a written reply to a question by Hee Loy Sian (PKR-Petaling Jaya Selatan) in Parliament Tuesday.

Hee wanted to know the rationale Dr Chua was not charged in court.

Hishammuddin said the case was investigated under Section 292/509 of the Penal Code.

In January 2008, Dr Chua resigned from his cabinet post and as MCA vice-president after admitting that the man in the sex video was him.

The Supreme Court’s latest missive on khaps must be sweet music to the self-styled village councils. The apex court has reportedly said that District Magistrates will be held liable if they fail to rein in village councils --- such as Haryana’s khaps and Tamil Nadu’s kattas --- from acting like kangaroo courts. Khaps will be happy. What more can a bunch of men with mob-mentality want than for someone else to be punished for their crime? Further, the Court’s faith in the police is touching.

Reports say that the apex court has also said that State machinery should institute criminal charges against khap members if they’ve harmed a couple. But khap panchayats have always said they do not issue directives to harm couples, let alone kill them. After the murder of a couple, khaps have invariably, and naturally so, distanced themselves from the two families involved. The men who have killed, mostly family members, are trotted off to jail. At best, a couple of men are sentenced for a murder an entire village kept quiet on. If a case makes it to the newspapers, the police come in only to maintain ‘peace’, buy silence, lament the state of affairs and certainly their helplessness.

The absurdly termed ‘honour killings’ are not like other murders. Murders of couples are only one end of a spectrum of crimes that communities inflict on their own. Community crime flourishes across India in a hundred different shades, all dark and scary --- ‘honour killings’ only one extreme.

The focus cannot be on punishing a few individuals. The village must feel some pain. The focus must be on penalizing the village. Villagers must be made ‘stakeholders’ in crimes committed with the sanction of all of them. Holding DMs liable isn’t the issue really. The problem isn’t with law enforcement alone; the problem is in the absence of an applicable law for community crime, which is what honour killings are.Community crimes make it to the news almost every day. If one day it is a woman in Indore made to walk with burning coal in her hands to prove she is not a thief, the next day it is villagers near Delhi threatening to kidnap all the girls of an enemy village. Yesterday it was two widows killed for having an “affair”. Recall the anganwadi worker who had her arms chopped off for defying child marriage. Or the visuals of the gruesome dragging of villagers tied to motorbikes. The blame of allowing the atrocities lies as much with the bystanders as with the actual culprits.

There’s nothing to stop the economic and social sanctions that villagers impose either. In Haryana, a khap barred shops from selling any item, including cattle fodder, to the mother-sister duo of killed couple Manoj-Babli. Chandrapati was feted for having the guts to continue fighting for justice despite being isolated in her own village. But even after the court convicted the killers, the community continued to isolate Chandrapati. Her younger son keeps his identity hidden. The stories are dime-a-dozen. In UP’s Kinanagar, near Meerut, stunned labourer-fathers of a teenage boy and girl killed with cutlasses by the girl’s brothers (arrested) were tersely told by their khap not to grieve as it was 'meant to be'. Stealing of property by village councils, throwing out of entire families are fodder for full-page features in newspapers and that’s it.

None of these crimes, all committed by community sanction, can be punished. At a public meeting, Brinda Karat said she visited the village threatened with the kidnap of its girls. This was in retaliation to a resident’s elopement with a girl of the bully-village. The attention had the police register a case of ‘thuggery’. Karat was stumped. In the Indore case, a couple of policemen were suspended. There’s no closure and there’s no stopping such behaviour. There's no law under which such crimes can be suitably dealt with.

To bring home how skewed our take on community crime is, take the example of Sunita Murmu. Her case throws into eerily sharp focus the strange workings of the nation’s mind. Sixteen-year-old Murmu from West Bengal is among the 23 children who won the 2010 National Bravery Awards for Children. Murmu even got a special mention.

Murmu was attacked when she was caught talking to a boy outside her community in their Santhal village. She was stripped, paraded naked and molested by her own tribesmen. She reportedly raced through fields across three or four villages, where no man or woman or official intervened to protect her; however, she was easy prey and was molested repeatedly. Some recorded the attacks and the MMS spread. NGOs spotted it, and police were pressured to step in. Murmu’s bravery, we are told, lies in her daring to identify some of the attackers. And so we impose upon her a cold bravery award. And India plumbs its own sorry depths of insensitivity.

Murmu is certainly not the first child-woman to be stripped and paraded naked. Neither is she the first to have identified some of the molesters. But importantly, it’s not enough to nab a few out of tens or hundreds of men and women who jeered at her, mocked her, who didn’t step in to either stop the molesters or drag her to protection. Arrests are part of the deal only to appease the Other India. Molesters, attackers pooh-pooh their way out. Remorse, regret, guilt are alien sentiments.

Those who were asked to look at the possibilities of a law for ‘honour killing’ believe too that the community must face some penalty. They are thus mooting for a community crime law that brings into its ambit a range of such attacks. The idea is that the law must focus on protecting an individual’s right and penalize those individuals and community organisations such as khaps who obstruct the exercise of that right. At the most basic level, that includes a person’s freedom to speak to or marry of their choice. Such a law will also strengthen the voices within the community that do want to speak out but remain muted in the absence of any form of support. Into any such law must also be woven some form of sanctions on the villagers/ the community: stop funds perhaps.

In Murmu’s case, what will stop her community from repeating such an attack on another 15-year-old? In twisted logic, the village might celebrate the chances of winning another bravery award. Surely, awarding punishment on the villages that have so cruelly forced a ‘past’ into young Murmu’s life would have served the child, and the nation, better. If only there were a law to punish her tormentors. To that end, the Supreme Court’s attempt at tackling the so-called ‘honour killings’ via DMs is more an exercise in arm wringing.