To date, Nurin's abductors and murderers have yet to be apprehended and brought to justice. Four men and a woman were picked up, questioned and subsequently released for lack of evidence linking them to the hideous crime. Then a 23-year-old Indonesian woman was arrested in Nilai, whereupon she swallowed a SIM card. She was admitted to the Universiti Malaya Medical Center where she refused to eat for days, but nurses finally managed to get her to purge the evidence. We'll never know what the Indonesian woman was trying to conceal because any data on the SIM card she swallowed proved unretrievable after prolonged immersion in her gastric juices. In any case I have found no follow-up reports on the results of the police investigation. What happened to the SIM-card-swallowing woman? Who was she anyway?
It would appear there are a lot of dark, dire secrets and unsolved murders in Malaysia - perhaps because the trail sometimes leads where it isn't supposed to go.
Like everybody else, I was deeply troubled by reports of Nurin's disappearance and the nightmarish manner in which she was murdered. And, sadly, Nurin just happens to be the most sensational case in recent years of child abduction, rape and murder - perhaps because she looked so utterly adorable. Everybody saw in Nurin a vision of their own precious and beloved child. To me, Nurin was the perfect symbol of the whole country - a beautiful, innocent soul with infinite potential, embodying all the exotic charm and irresistible allure of the Orient, and carrying the great hope in all our hearts for a wonderfully bright and joyful future.
Nurin was Malaysia's poster child, the fragrant flower of a dozen family trees and five hundred generations of fortuitous miscegenation. Only good things were supposed to happen to Nurin Jazlin Jazimin, not a fate so macabre you wouldn't wish it upon your worst enemy's children.
So who killed Nurin?
Nurin's dad, Jazimin Abdul Jalil, buries another dream; meanwhile, criticized for his incompetence, Police Inspector-General Musa Hassan threatens to charge Nurin's parents with "negligence." |
DEAD OR MISSING, PRESUMED DEAD: what's the link between sexual repression and child murder-rape? |
Every one of us is guilty of murdering Nurin who keeps quiet and shrugs whenever an unjust law is legislated into being by myopic, pusillanimous, self-serving parliamentarians - laws like the Internal Security and Police Acts that allow the State to arrest, torture and detain political dissenters without habeas corpus and forcibly disperse peaceful public gatherings.
Censorship policies that favor violence over eroticism: wherein it is permitted to view humans being punched, kicked, knifed, shot and blown to smithereens - but scenes of tender passion like lovers kissing and harmless amorous acts expressing affection are strictly forbidden, labeled "immoral" or "sinful" by religious hypocrites.
In a nation where a grown man or woman can be accused, publicly humiliated, subject to a mock trial and sentenced to nine years' jail for allegedly indulging in consensual anal or oral sex - but fabricators of evidence with evil and malicious intent are promoted to top positions in government where they are given the power of life or death over others - there is little chance of survival for the beauty, truth, and innocence that Nurin symbolized.
Here we are, shedding crocodile tears for victims of our own moral apathy - whether they be abductable 8-year-old nymphettes or street-savvy 22-year-old urban guerrillas with suspected links to criminal syndicates - while the most corrupt, spendthrift and murderously vindictive woman in the country preens herself before a gilded mirror in preparation for her debauched spouse's utterly undeserved rise to the highest position in the land...
Just knowing that millions (perhaps even billions) of ringgit have been squandered to prop up this grotesque travesty of human decency, truth and justice makes me shudder. And whenever I hear people robotically sing the praises of our "great" former leader, Dr Mahathir - the man who gave us Putrajaya, the Petronas Twin Towers, and massive delusions of grandeur, in exchange for the nation's soul - I make it a point to take a dozen deep breaths... access my genetic archives... reclaim my divine heritage... and declare to the entire cosmos...
HELL, NO! HEAVEN, YES!!!
[First posted 3 February 2009]