The below article/letter is published with permission from the contributor/writer and was featured on the Malaysiakini website early this month.To visit Malaysiakini click here.
Would you kill a snatch thief?
Ir Hew YL | Aug 1, 08 4:05pm
Recently, I almost caught a snatch thief. I was walking along Jalan Telawi
Lima, Bangsar Baru in Kuala Lumpur where Maybank, McDonald's and the
Rocky Restaurant are situated, at 3pm on a bright Saturday afternoon.
Whilst walking I was reading a SMS on my hand phone. Suddenly, the
hand phone was taken off my hand by a guy on a motorbike and he proceeded
to ride off with the phone in his mouth.
Unfortunately for him, he was on the road shoulder and the obstacles there
did not allow him to speed up. I ran alongside him and pushed him
off-balance. His bike ramped over water-meters and he crashed into a
clinic's shop front.
I retrieved my hand phone which fell off in the crash. I looked at the guy,
thinking that he's now an accident victim and may need help. He got up,
glared at me and retorted "Apa u mau?" I gestured with my hands thinking
'What's happening man'.
After all, he looks like any other guy on a bike, just like the ones I
would hire to work as office staff, or the ones I played football with,
years ago.
Suddenly he revved off on his bike. I realised again he was a thief and
ought to be treated as one. I managed to kick him below his ribs, but I
doubt he was hurt. I chased but he went through two rows of tables along
the five foot way, up a six-inch step, and down another two steps on his
noisy 'scrambler' motorbike, speeding past the trendy restaurants.
By now there was quite an audience starring in disbelief that a snatch
theft case was going on right in the middle of a busy street in classy
Bangsar. The crowd was the usual middle to upper class English-speaking
people of Bangsar. My wife witnessed the whole incident as she waited for
me in our car waiting to pick me up after an errand.
For your information, in my family of five adults living in Bangsar, we
have now been victims of five snatch thefts and car break-ins in the last
two years. We all wonder why the rich residents of Bangsar cannot get
together to protect ourselves.
The saying that we have a First World infrastructure with Third World
mentality rings true again. Here was an area with Starbucks, McDonald's,
Western pubs, and foreign-trained professionals and so on. But here is
also where the Mat Rempit come to pick on easy victims, like my wife
(twice) and my 80-year-old mother and friend.
What is the difference between Bangsar and South Africa now? The crime
rate looks like it is just as bad. The difference is that in South Africa,
apartheid is back, in the form of gated communities, gated shopping areas,
gated office and commercial areas.
Private guards are everywhere in South Africa expecting trouble and armed
to protect themselves and their employers. In Bangsar, we still think we
are in a nice, safe area and that the police are nearby. Our five resident
associations still can't get private security in place.
But coming back to the snatch thief. In hindsight, for about three
seconds, I could have caught him and beaten him up. It was just like
starring at a cornered rat in the house, just before you kill it with a
stick and watch it die, twitching away before going still.
People I spoke to said they would have killed him, and asked why I didn't
kill him. Certainly, incidences like this have happened before and the
unlucky thief was actually beaten up and killed in a public show of anger
and revenge for past incidents.
When I remember that my wife was traumatised by snatch theft incidences
twice in six months and both times in Bangsar, and my 80-year-old mother
who was sent to hospital and is right now still suffering from a bad back
due to a snatch theft in Bangsar, yes, I think I could have killed him.
Many said to me the police would not do anything even though we have his
bike number plate (which fell off) so we better just kill him on the spot.
Then again, this is the year where political awareness is almost at an all
time high. I tend to think that this Mat Rempit may be one of those who
suffered years of mismanagement and mismatched expectations.
In the last many years, I have worked and played alongside with my fellow
Malaysians. This year at work, I saw with my own eyes my Malay colleagues
openly supporting DAP candidates while my Chinese and Christian colleagues
openly voted for Malay and Muslim candidates. Malaysian citizens have not
felt so united for a long time.
This snatch thief is another fellow Malaysian citizen somehow misguided
and lost in the world. We make excuses and say they are probably addicts,
foreigners, etc. Let's face it, they are our own Mat Rempit, out there in
the hundreds, crowding out the prisons, snatching as they like, not just
in Snatch-Theft-Center-Bangsar, but also in Kepong, Seremban, Johor Baru,
Klang, Kajang, anywhere.
Are there a few hardcore snatch thieves? Or are there populations of Mat
Rempit going around just snatching when they feel like it? With so many
incidents, it is obvious that there are hordes of them. With an impending
recession and the political situation in disarray, expect more snatch
thefts. My 83-year-old father has not been 'snatched from' yet. No bets on
whether he'll be a victim within the next one year in Bangsar.
So think about it. If you are ready to kill a snatch thief, please be
ready to kill the rest of the hundreds of Mat Rempit. I still think I
can't kill a thief, much as I think of him as a rat of a person.
HEW, YL
Labels: 101, 2008, Bangsar
