Cattle-Branding Women Not Acceptable

The Malaysian police have a lot of explaining to do after officers bound 30 women detained for alleged prostitution in chains, and branded them “as though they were cattle.”

Thirty Chinese and Vietnamese women, as well as eight Malaysian men, were arrested in a raid on a Penang nightclub on Thursday. The women were then chained together and marked on the face and chest with a tick or an X.

The police say the markings served only as a way of identifying the women, however women’s rights groups and opposition lawmakers are calling for an investigation into the sadistic conduct.

“It is sickening that the police would employ such dehumanising tactics as a show of power and moral superiority over their detainees,” said Teresa Kok, an opposition politician.

“The police branded the detained women as though they are cattle,” she said.

Penang police chief Ayub Yaakob justified the situation by explaining that some of the women donned new clothes to try and blend in with the other club patrons. He also said the women had wrecked many marriages, and that police had received complaints from the wives of men who frequented prostitutes.

This logic is sick.

Not only is Yaakob blaming distressed wives for his force’s foul performance, he is placing the full culpability of prostitution on women…. As though men are completely blameless, passive chums who accidentally have sex with women who aren’t their wives, and then have to pay them for it.

Someone needs to inform the chief, and his boys at the precinct, that women are not pigs in an abattoir or trees destined for lopping, that require an X on their head or chest for identification. They are human beings with civil rights and a sense of dignity, something which the police force seems determined to eradicate.

Lawyers for Liberty say the behavior is “unusual and inhumane,” as the women hadn’t been convicted of any crime.

It would be unusual and inhumane even if they had.

Contact the author here: brianna@morningquickie.com