Beaten in detention? Beat the detention!

There have been many blog articles, news reports, police reports, coffee talks, kovil kathai, whatapps chats on death of (Malaysian) Indians while in police detention. There are also, mega numbers of theories, accusations, condemnations and finger pointing by various quarters on this matter. I’m not going to post pictures of dead Indians in this article, you can find them on other sites a lot.

We can’t deny the fact that, statistics shows at least one death in detention is recorded every month in Malaysia.  This statistic is alarming, more so when it involves so many of our Indian community. In this piece, I’m not going to write about who is right or wrong, who is better off dead or alive, who is the victim or perpetrators. I’m going to say something that is beyond all the distortion about one particular community is targeted and ending up dead in detention.

The question is again answered by statistics: how many criminals or suspects are arrested every month by the police, from that total how many of them are Indians? From that list of Indians how many are dead in detention, and how many are actually INNOCENTS (as claimed by their family)? Very unlikely (however, not impossible), we find an innocent Indian is picked-up by police for questioning and he/she returns home in a coffin. There must be some preconditions that allowed these ‘suspects’ to be detained, right? So why are there so many Indians having suspicious track records? The enticement of crime, ‘gang fame’ and easy money?

Just look around us, part of our community is engrossed with gang related activities. They can be from school kids to matured adults; everyone wants to be part of these gangs. Proudly drawing graffiti of their gang symbols and numbers all over town, like animals marking its territories. Kids proudly positing their gang/crime related affiliations on social network, picked up and exposed by pages like Comedy Machas & Machis almost everyday. Finishing schools with lower grades and lesser advancement opportunities, they are elevated to higher, more brutal gang activities, flocking together like horny hyenas, wrecking havoc in neighborhood. Well, we can’t see them getting together, doing community service or charitable causes, however they are quick to ‘turun’ and show off the ‘might’ of teaming up against rival gangs.

Let’s see, aren’t these contributes to the large number of Indians ending up in lock-up every month? And 1 or 2 of the face the unlucky ending, coming out in a body bag. Yes, yes, yes, we can keep giving the archaic (some what valid) reasons for all these Indians turning into criminals because: 

• Lack of proper parenting;
• Lack of guidance at schools;
• Lack of equal education opportunities post-school;
• Lack of equal, proper employment chances;
• Lack of quality life; and
• Bla bla bla …

But, it have been many years that our community been shown or told : WE ARE ALL BY OURSELVES! We have to work harder to improve the socio-economic status of the community. We have to be more independent. We have to be more connected with each other. We have support our own community, without the help of politicians. We have to use whatever education (tertiary or vocational) opportunities to improve our earnings. We have to spend more time doing good deeds instead of getting involved in bad sides.

But, honestly do you see our community’s socio-economic, education and perception going uphill? Nope, the very Indians who are arrested for various brutal crimes are being used to benchmark the rest of us. A  large part of our community is working the butts off to reach higher grounds, while another part is working hard to pull them down! Everyday our media is highlighting the unimaginable crimes executed by these people against our own community! They are not helping themselves by getting into these criminal gangs and getting drifted away in crimes, and they are further degrading our community’s aspirations to become a better society.

My point is, if we are an Indian and don’t want to be dead in detention, don’t get detained in the first place. If we die in the hands of authorities (while in detention or not), we’re partly responsible for being sought by the authorities. We are the result of our own actions.

The number of Indians dying in detention will only go down, if the number of Indians getting arrested for their crimes reduces. Thick hope, at the current rate.