Police Brutality : Nothing Unusual

After some time, I just have to tell myself that I have to learn to get used to hearing cases on police brutality, no matter how repugnant and how unbelievable they can be.

The recent case of the beating and abduction by Police of K.Selvachandran, a key witness who testified against the police in the recently concluded R.Gunasegaran death in custody inquest bears testimony to the state of fascism and lawlessness of the highest degree.

I guess it's pretty normal for me to be confronted with the never ending accounts of police brutality, given the nature of activism I'm currently involved in. After all, according to the then Commissioner of SUHAKAM, Dato' Siva, 70% of cases referred to and dealt with by SUHAKAM involved police brutality.

So, it's nothing unusual isn't it?

People get beaten up in lock ups, people died in custody, people get shot at without justification. Police are getting away with all these things, no oversight mechanism set up despite repeated demands by the civil society. And we got and IGP and a Home Minister who would always side with the police over the victims which can be clearly seen in their response to public uproar on the lawlessness of their agents and the police institution. To expect them to announce that the matter will be investigated is nothing but an erroneous wishful thinking which will never match the current reality.

No accountability whatsoever. Like it or not, we are living in a complete state of lawlessness, surrounded by material development where one can brag on and on in the hope of becoming world's most developed country.

How strange that things that happen almost like a routine still affect one's mind as if they never happen before. The frustration, the anger, the disbelief, the feeling of hopelessness would always be there,hanging at the back of one's head, in utter disregard of the frequency of such happenings that would normally attract the 'normal' reaction which gradually turns into silent approval.

One gets upset. One starts to question the feeling. One even goes further to question is this wrong a right thing? Battling with a distant perspective drawn from of a foreign land where the grass is definitely much greener than the grass in the land of ours.

A quick observation on the statistic below:-
Death by police shooting in England and Wales in 2009 = 2 deaths (investigated)
Death by police shooting in Malaysia in 2009 = 39 ( no investigation)

This kind of observation would always make me wonder, why can't we be like them?

Is it right for a suspect, a criminal, an innocent man, a man, a woman, a teenager, a human being to be assaulted, murdered, humiliated while being in police custody? If it is, I am such a total failure in search of its permissibility.

Then why are there so many people conspiring to insult justice? One question after another.Is it me or everything around me is falling apart?

Then why do I still hear people, 'educated' people, with CGPA of 3.95, graduated from an institution that taught rule of law think that this is okay? Does reading KOSMO with the headline "Pelakon filem susuk bercerai" have something to do with this?

Is it too wishful of me to ever think, for one second, that we can have the same green grass we are talking about in the foreign land, here in our country?

Or we should just leave it well alone? Can we?