(MM) - DAP MP Gobind Singh Deo challenged today Datuk Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar to back his claim that Malaysia’s minorities were more tolerant of statutory rape.
The deputy home minister had told Parliament earlier during Question Time that “non-Malays are maybe more accepting” of sexual violations involving underaged children, earning Gobind’s wrath.
“This is absolute and utter rubbish,” Gobind said in a statement.
The Puchong MP said Wan Junaidi’s statement was a very serious allegation and “casts a most damning insinuation” on all Malaysians as if to suggest there were racial groups in society that condoned child rape.
Gobind, who is also a criminal lawyer and the DAP’s head of legal affairs, described the deputy home minister’s statement as “most shallow, irresponsible and outrageous”.
He noted that the police statistics Wan Junaidi had cited in his parliamentary reply cannot be used to support any statement that race played a role or stretched to mean non-Malays were less sensitive to child rape compared to Malays.
“Can he show us how many of such rapes have occurred and gone unreported until now because those affected were of a certain race who ‘were less sensitive towards it’ or ‘could accept it’?” Gobind asked, of Wan Junaidi.
The opposition lawmaker demanded Wan Junaidi retract his statement and apologise immediately if he was unable to furnish proof to support his theory.
Wan Junaidi had suggested that Malays were more intolerant of their youths who preyed sexually on minors compared to Malaysians of other ethnicities, when asked about the high number of reported statutory rape cases involving the country’s biggest community.
“This doesn’t mean the cases mostly involve Malays. Because Malays are culturally more sensitive about its youth so there are more police reports about it.
“Non-Malays are maybe more accepting about it so the margin (is lower),” Wan Junaidi said in reply to Setiu Barisan Nasional MP Che Mohamad Zulkifly Jusoh.
The Santubong MP said that in 2012, there were 1,550 reported incidents of statutory rape, with Malays taking the top spot at 48 per cent, followed by the Chinese at 5 per cent and Indians at 3 per cent, and added that the number last year had dropped to 1,424 cases.
Wan Junaidi also said close to 90 per cent of the cases reported involved those aged between 16 and 19.
Malaysia was rocked in the past two years by several high-profile cases of men having sex with underage girls, some barely in their teens, which raised questions over the Penal Code.
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