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Efforts to make marital rape a statutory offence in Malaysia
has come up against opposition.
The mufti of Perak state, Harussani Zakaria, has declared
that such a move is against Islam. He believes that intimacy
in marriage is a husband’s right.
Women’s groups in the country have been angered by this,
and have given their support to the government’s human
rights commission’s efforts to legally protect women
from marital rape.
For more on the issue, Yvonne Gomez spoke to Ms Peck Lin
from the All Women’s Action Society, or AWAM, in Kuala
Lumpur.
PL: As it is now, marital rape is not recognized in our laws.
But the law doesn’t reflect the situation, the reality
of violence in Malaysia. So one of the concerns being raised
is that this is a Western concept, but how can people say
rape is a Western concept or related to Western values? If
you look at Malaysia, violence within marriage is very rampant.
At AWAM, we’ve received many cases of women who walk
into our centre or call our telephone counseling hotline to
talk about this violence. It is only through the interview
that women slowly reveal that a lot of them are raped, forced
to have sex when their husbands beat them up or abuse them.
Our law doesn’t recognize this fact at the moment, and
for us, it’s become a concern because we’ve been
hearing about this for many years and it’s become so
rampant that something needs to be done.
Can you elaborate on some of the specific concerns of AWAM
regarding this issue?
PL: We have documented cases, but I can’t tell you the
percentage, but I can quote from the WAO (Women’s Aid
Organisation) who’s said that out of 70 domestic violence
cases, 10% involve spousal rape or marital rape. So 10% out
of 70 is a lot, if we take the baseline as zero. These kinds
of cases should not happen at all so 10% is a lot. From our
point of view, it should be 0%.
Earlier you touched on this issue, but calls to enact new
laws to protect women from marital rape have reportedly come
under opposition by the mufti of Perak state. What do you
think are some reasons behind this resistance?
PL: We don’t know what the reasons are behind this,
but from reading articles in the newspapers, they’ve
used the “Western concept” argument which I mentioned
earlier. Violence happens all across the world, you know.
There’s no difference between the West or the East. Violence
is a question of power relationships, the imbalance of the
power relationship. Also, they mentioned that in Islam, the
man has certain rights – conjugal rights. But with this,
we have to question whether, when people get married, what
do marry into? When a woman agrees to marry, it’s based
on mutual consent, isn’t it? What we want to emphasise
is violence and force because in our experience of dealing
with domestic violence cases, we’ve found that a lot
of them are being forced to enter into an act to which they
did not consent. For us, the issue of consent is very important.
Of course, if it’s a consensual act between a husband
and wife, there’s no issue. The husband must respect
this.
What direction do see this debate taking in the future? How
do you think the views of both sides can be considered in
any new law to protect women from rape within marriage?
PL: We have the competence within our government, because
the parliament has this special select committee to gather
information and feedback from the public, from NGOs, showing
that they’re open for discussion and debate. So we hope
that developments will be open, and they will take in the
opinions of both sides, weigh them and come up with something
that can protect women, especially from violence within marriage.
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