KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian women are questioning the usefulness of car parks across the Southeast Asian country providing special parking spaces for women after a string of sexual assaults last summer left many in the country worried over the future of being in public spaces. “As in most things Malaysian, this facility is rampantly abused where couples or families will drive into the car park, let out all the passengers at the entrance and the female driver will then nonchalantly proceed to the parking reserved for solo female drivers,” wrote Dave Avran in Free Malaysia Today commenting on the new concept. “Shopping malls with cinemas are more often than not targeted by criminals for potential victims, especially late night movie-goers as the shopping mall would normally be closed with limited exits which are normally through back alleys and/or poorly lighted routes,” he added. Malaysia has been debating the risk facing women at car parks in the country for almost one-year now after numerous women were attacked while leaving their work, shopping malls and other public places to get to their vehicle. As a result, the government has been looking to boost funding to better protect and bolster police efforts for women. In September, Wanita Barisan Nasional (BN) said it would like to see the government put more funding into the police department in the country for next year's budget in order to amp up efforts to end sexual crimes, domestic violence and child abuse in Malaysia. Wanita BN leader Shahrizat Abdul Jalil said attention should “be given towards training more investigating officers, as well as improve the research and development quality, especially equipment for forensic investigations." In a statement issued, she also suggested the “formation of a civil police force, increase mobile patrols and installation of more closed-circuit television cameras (CCTV)." Prime Minister Najib Razak tabled the 2013 Budget in Parliament. Sexual violence against women is on the rise, said the Women's Center for Change (WCC) earlier in the fall. They reported that every year, some 20,000 sexual crimes occur in the country, which highlights the need for better policing and more concerted action to empower women in Malaysia. WCC president Mariam Lim said at the opening of the organization's new office building on Burma Road earlier this month that for every case reported, some 8 to 10 go unreported. She reported that “63 rape cases were reported in Penang alone in the year 2000, with the number growing more than double by 2010. “For the same period, the number of reported domestic (violence) cases were about 300. “At the national level, 3,000 cases of rape and domestic violence each are reported annually," she said. Lim said the trend in rape statistics, including the age of victims was even more alarming, adding that recent court judgments in statutory rape cases seemed lopsided. Women in the country also have reported they are more scared to walk in the streets of the country after more and more women have gone public with attacks against them in recent months. “I am very scared of getting assaulted and only go out when my friends are with me and we are large group. As they say, power in numbers," said Mariam Wong, a Malay-Chinese Malaysian marketing student in Kuala Lumpur. She told Bikyamasr.com that two of her friends had been assaulted recently, “but they didn't report it because they knew the men who attacked them and didn't want to get into trouble from their family." Lim said the center was also concerned over the way the evidence given by a four-year-old rape victim was viewed by the court, resulting in the sentence on the convicted rapist being overturned. “WCC will continue to lobby for the improvement of our legal and judiciary system," she said at the official opening of the WCC building. BM
