By Yeo Bee Yin
Al-Jazeera in its programme 101 East, released an extremely disturbing video on baby-selling in Malaysia. It was shocking to see how babies can be traded so easily like commodities according to their gender and colour. In fact, the video revealed the sad truth that Malaysia was now a nation where criminals can do the most awful things to the most vulnerable groups and get away scot-free as long as they have money.
With this video unveiling the heinous baby-selling activities in Malaysia, from the agents who house the pregnant women, to the doctors who falsify birth documents, to the pimps who sell the sex-workers’ babies, we call upon the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) to immediately investigate and arrest those involved in the baby-selling syndicates.
Instead of detaining Maria Chin and constantly harassing other human rights activists, the IGP should spend more time and resources to attend to this real crime against human beings. Furthermore, instead of investigating countless opposition leaders, activists or even ordinary citizens based of their Facebook statuses or tweets, the police should go after those who so daringly sell babies on Facebook as revealed by the video.
In addition, it is clear from the video that baby-selling will not be possible without the involvement of corrupt officers from the Royal Malaysia Police and National Registration Department. Those who were recorded by the hidden cameras have repeatedly mentioned giving bribes to government officers. Therefore, we call upon the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to immediately investigate the matter and bring the officers who are involved to justice. Putrajaya should also review all the procedures involved in child adoption to make it easier for genuine couples to adopt children so that they do not turn to baby-selling syndicates instead.
Some of the babies are lucky enough to be “bought” by genuine parents but some are bought by paedophile rings and begging syndicates to fuel their businesses. We would like to remind Putrajaya that Malaysia has ratified the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child. The children’s right to life and protection from exploitation have been clearly violated by baby-selling syndicates. Therefore, Putrajaya must honour the ratification and act against such syndicates. All in all, we must not turn a blind eye to voiceless innocent babies, whose lives depend on our decisions as adults.
Yeo Bee Yin is the State Assemblywoman for Damansara Utama.
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