JUNE 4 — On May 20th, a 15-year-old girl was gang raped by up to 38 men in an abandoned house in Ketereh, Kelantan. It has been reported that the victim was lured by a female friend to go to Ketereh all the way from Kuala Krai, about 30 kilometres away.
When the victim arrived, having persuaded a male companion to give her a ride on his motorcycle, she was brought to an abandoned house in Kampung Huta Pasir, where a group of men ambushed, raped and sodomised the schoolgirl for hours until she lost consciousness, while her male companion was forced to watch. The victim’s female friend may have been raped as well. Most if not all the rapists were high on drugs, and many of them were related, including a father and his two sons.
The gang rape in Ketereh is not merely a heinous act of sexual violence; it is also a symptom of the deteriorating status of women and gender relations in Kelantan. Beyond the horrors of the particular incident, this case raises pertinent questions about changing attitudes between the sexes, as well as the link between religious puritanism and the unprecedented perversity that plagues Kelantanese society and Malaysia as a whole.
While this particular case of gang rape is shocking, it is also nothing new. It is alarming to note that rape has been steadily on the rise in Kelantan for at least the past five years, many cases involving minors. Statistics show that Kelantan repeatedly scores the highest incidence of rape, drug abuse and HIV positive cases in the country.
In 2012, Bernama reported that rape cases in Kelantan have been climbing steadily each year. Two hundred and twenty-eight cases were filed in 2007, rising to 563 in 2008, and 656 in 2010. This is not even taking into account the unreported cases. To make matters worse, many victims were children as young as 12-years-old.
Considering the important place of women in traditional Kelantanese society, the frequency and increasing brutality of gender violence in this state reveals a deeply unsettling pattern of social breakdown that needs to be examined seriously and addressed at the root.
Powerful women in traditional society
The centrality of women in traditional Kelantanese society is evident from the powerful presence of women both in Kelantan’s mythology as well as in the local economy.
The mythological landscape of Kelantan-Pattani is populated by female figures, notably queens and princesses who were powerful rulers of their kingdoms. The legendary queen of Kelantan, Che Siti Wan Kembang, said to have reigned during the 14th century, was renowned for her beauty, wisdom and her skills as a warrior. She and her adopted daughter, Puteri Saadong – who was later installed as Raja of Kelantan – are also believed to have mystical powers.
There are also the legendary Four Queens of Pattani – three royal sisters named Raja Hijau (Green), Raja Biru (Blue) and Raja Ungu (Violet), who ruled the kingdom from 1584 to 1635 and were succeeded by Raja Kuning (Yellow), the princess of Raja Ungu. The reign of the Four Queens was a glorious era of stability and prosperity in the Kingdom of Pattani.
Siti Dewi – the heroine of Kelantan’s Wayang Kulit tradition – is one of the most admired and cherished characters, more beloved in fact than her vainglorious husband, Prince Seri Rama.
In the mundane realm, the traditional role of women in Kelantan is one of household authority and economic power. On his voyage to Kelantan in 1837, Munsyi Abdullah observed that Kelantanese women dominated trade at the marketplace and remarked on their industriousness. Even today, women wield more presence and power than men at the local markets in Kelantan and often manage the family expenses. However, the Kelantanese woman’s robust sense of self seems to be less and less apparent in younger women who have been through the current school system and social conditioning.
In her book, Visible Women in East Coast Malay Society: On the Reproduction of Gender in Ceremonial, School and Market (Scandinavian University Press, 1994), Prof. Ingrid Rudie charts the changing status and role of women in Kelantan, comparing her fieldwork findings from 1986-88 to her earlier research carried out in 1964-65.
Rudie finds that Kelantanese women had greater freedom, scope and authority in household and economic life in the 1960s, whereas by the late 1980s, Islamic revivalism throughout Malaysia had significantly affected gender roles in Kelantan. The rhetoric of Islamic values saw a gradual redefining of women’s duties and position in the family – including obedience to the male head of the household.
This view seems to concord with Prof. Wazir Jahan Karim who asserts in her book, Women and Culture: Between Malay Adat and Islam (Westview Press, 1992), that Malay adat (customary law) provides women with avenues of freedom and participation that have been undermined by the ascendancy of Islamic orthodoxy in Malaysia in recent decades.
All this is testifies to an overall decline in the status of women over the past few decades in Kelantan (as well as other parts of the country), and the circumscribing of women’s traditional authority in public and private space. Needless to say, the decline in the status of women often corresponds to the rise in gender attitudes that inadvertently condone violence against women, including rape.
The long shadow of Puritanism
Many have pointed to our poor education system as the root cause of such a despicable act as the brutal gang rape in Ketereh. Meanwhile some religious leaders, including PAS vice-president Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man, have suggested that this case simply proves the need for the implementation of hudud law.
Both these views do not seem to grasp that the sexual violence that is becoming more common in Kelantan and elsewhere in Malaysia is rooted in deep socio-cultural-psychological dilemmas that won’t be easily solved by reforming external systems such as education or law.
The perversity that urges this kind of sexual violence brews and ferments in the shadow of Puritanism that is permeating all aspects of social life in Kelantan. The imposition of religious edict that, among other things, has called for gender segregation in public places, has demonised ancient cultural traditions like the Wayang Kulit and Mak Yong, and even tried to forbid female hairdressers from attending to male clients, only serves to underscore the incongruence between the sanctimonious genuflections of morality politics and the dynamics of real community life.
While religious practice in Kelantan has been traditionally conservative, it also co-existed with traditional social values and local worldviews, where women played a dominant and highly visible role in community life. By contrast, the revivalist Islam that has gained popularity and influence in the Malaysia since the late 1980s has ushered in a new brand of Puritanism that alienates both Kelantanese women and men from their own cultural identity and sense of self.
From my years of working closely with cultural traditions in Kelantan, I have observed that the older generation of Kelantanese do not seem to be as affected by the Puritan politics and conditioning as the younger generation. The older Kelantanese are more rooted in who they are and, staying true to the independent Kelantanese spirit, will ignore or disregard edicts that don’t make sense to their lives.
The younger generation have far less to hold on to. With their own cultural fabric literally torn away from them and with little opportunity for upward social mobility, they have nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no way to release their boundless energy. Is it so surprising then that they should gravitate towards motorbike racing, drugs, and engage in bullying and violence? Between gender segregation and alienation from themselves, is it so surprising that young men in Kelantan have lost the art of communication and interaction with women?
The proscription of cultural traditions such as the Wayang Kulit, Mak Yong, Manora, and Main Puteri has contributed significantly to the erosion of a Kelantanese sensibility, and to deteriorating gender relations particularly among the young.
The female-centred Mak Yong tradition is in fact a ritual space where young people are exposed to the power and complexity of the female presence. By witnessing and imbibing the authority and emotional intricacy of the female Mak Yong characters, young men and women learn how to perceive each other in layered ways.
These traditions also offer cultural strategies where young people learn that sensuality is part and parcel of the human personality and is a natural and playful dimension of community life.
If all traces of sensuality and playfulness are banished from the environment and experience of the young, they will grow up being ashamed and resentful of their natural urges, and will end up approaching sex through violence or fear.
Moral education is neither the root nor the remedy of social ills among the young in Kelantan. Neither will the implementation of hudud resolve escalating sexual violence and social breakdown.
Perhaps the first step to addressing these problems is to acknowledge that they originate in a socio-cultural self and psyche that has been battered, twisted and made perverse by decades of Puritanism and the morality politics it insists on forcing down our throats.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
