Tembak #2!!
On 31st March 2024 I reached for my newspaper, as
usual, when I woke up. The headline on the front page read, “Violence Has No
Place in Our Country.” I have no interest in commenting on front-page
headlines. However, when I flipped to page 10, I read an article titled “FiveRobbers Killed in a Shootout.” I thought to myself - what a Sunday morning! The
front page preaches against violence, yet page 10 narrates the deaths of five
individuals in a shootout.
On the 8th of February 2012, I wrote this post titled“TEMBAK!!!”. It discussed the widespread shooting of citizens by our law enforcement agencies during that period. It appears that police engagements with robbers or suspicious characters via shootouts remain a norm in our country. In all these "tembak-tembak" incidents, no police officer is reported to have been shot dead (I stand to be corrected). Either the victims are unfamiliar with firearms or they don’t know how to shoot them. In opposition, our enforcement agency officers are well-trained, as none of them are shot dead. This difference makes me doubt the reality of these so-called shootouts. I have always asked this question: are these truly shootouts, or merely cover stories? Coming back to this, the police shooting the five robbers over the weekend, many questions are unanswered mainly:
1.
How did the police know that the five robbers
were on their way to rob a building, possibly a factory or a courier company?
Did the robbers inform the police officers of their intentions before the
police shot them?
2.
How did the police know that the robbers were travelling
to commit a robbery when they spotted them?
3.
How can we verify that the two pistols, a
revolver, and a semi-automatic pistol found at the incident spot belonged to
the robbers?
4.
Were the firearms stolen?
5.
Was there an alternative approach available to
law enforcement to apprehend the robbers without resorting to deadly force,
resulting in the death of the robbers, thereby allowing for a thorough
investigation into their potential involvement in the 50-armed robberies that
have occurred in the Klang Valley since 2022?
To conclude this tragic blog, I am suggesting that the
government set up an inquiry Commission to investigate and report on police shootings
in Malaysia. The purpose would be to verify whether these were actual shootouts
brought about because of a series of events or planned exterminations and
whether the individuals labelled as robbers were indeed robbers guilty of the
various alleged robberies as alleged by the police. In addition, the inquiry
should aim to determine if such shootouts could have been prevented or if
alternative measures could have been employed to minimize casualties. It is my
wish that through such investigations, future shootouts can be prevented, thus
avoiding unnecessary deaths. Even worse, innocent bystanders or individuals may
become victims of these avoidable incidents.
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