A STUDENT died after being bullied. He didn’t commit suicide, he died as a direct result of the injuries he sustained while being bullied.
That’s shocking.
Also shocking is the fact that the six students involved in the bullying were sentenced to death earlier this year.
In reversing a previous sentence of 18 years’ imprisonment, the Appeals Court judge said the crime was “shocking and rare”.
“... the way the murder was conducted shocked not only the judicial conscience but even the collective conscience of society. This case is the rarest of the rare involving a heinous crime. Such cruelty must be stopped,” said Justice Hadhariah Syed Ismail at sentencing on July 23.
You wouldn’t think such a crime, the rarest of the rare, would be repeated, would you?
And yet, what happened to the late Zulfarhan Osman Zulkarnain seven years ago, when he was burned with a clothes iron all over his body, has happened again albeit to a lesser degree – and at the same institution, Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia (UPNM).
On Nov 8, 22-year-old cadet officer Amirul Iskandar Norhanizan claimed trial to a charge of voluntarily causing hurt to his junior by pressing a steam iron on the cadet’s chest.
And yet another case of bullying causing physical injuries came to light when a police report was lodged on Nov 8 by a UPNM student who was injured in October, though not with an iron this time.
What is happening at the country’s premiere military university that is supposed to develop future leaders of Malaysia’s defence sector?
Defence Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin has announced that measures will be taken to prevent bullying, including regular physical examinations of cadets to detect signs of bullying, installing more CCTVs at hostels, patrolling cadet accommodation at night, and increasing the number of wardens monitoring the cadets.
All well and good, but doesn’t anyone want to know why this one institution has so many cases of serious bullying – serious to the point of causing death and injuries?
The Defence Ministry has pointed out that the bullying is specifically linked to UPNM’s Military Training Academy, not the university in general.
And one does expect training in a military academy to be hard, physically as well as mentally.
But as Mohamed Khaled has said: “I want to clarify that while military training is indeed tough, it does not involve acts of cruelty such as assaults with hot irons.”
Rather than concluding we need to remove all irons, as some have rather absurdly called for, or believing that the youth attending the academy are inherently cruel, we can only think that the cadets are responding to their environment.
What is it about this institution that makes it OK to cause such pain? Is it toxic masculinity? Is it the old-fashioned idea that pain will “toughen up” juniors who need disciplining?
We believe someone needs to look into the institution’s administration, not just to penalise those in charge for letting things get so bad, but to find out why there is a culture that permits such behaviour to happen.
Just punishing the cadets who bully is not enough, obviously: The latest case of a hot iron being wielded came after six former cadets had been sentenced to death for doing so.
Something is very wrong if a death sentence isn’t enough to stop bullying.
