Citing the latest home ministry statistics, the US Department of State’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2016 said 28,741 rape cases were reported from 2005 to 2014 with 16% taken to court and 2.7% resulting in guilty verdicts.
The report also highlighted accounts from women’s groups which said that on average, 10 women were raped each day with more than half of them younger than 16 years.
According to police statistics, the report said, 4,807 cases of domestic violence, 2,045 cases of rape, and 1,590 cases of sexual harassment were reported in 2014.
It said many victims decided against reporting the rape due to cultural attitudes and an alleged lack of sympathy from the largely male police force. Women’s groups also claimed that the courts were inconsistent in punishing rapists, it said.
Aside from rape, female genital mutilation or cutting (FGM/C) was also prevalent. The report cited a 2012 university study on FGM/C which said more than 90% of the Muslim women respondents had undergone the process. The most common reasons given were religious obligation, cultural tradition and hygiene, it said.
Health ministry guidelines allow FGM/C but only at government healthcare facilities. In 2009, the Fatwa Committee of the National Council of Islamic Religious Affairs ruled female circumcision obligatory for Muslims but “must be avoided if found to be harmful to health”, the report said.
The report also looked at abuse of children and found that child abuse normally took the form of neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse and infant abandonment.
According to Suhakam, the government filed 2,189 charges of child sexual abuse with only 140 successful convictions from January 2012 to July 2016, it said.
The report said incest was also a problem but did not specify details.
The law provides for six to 20 years’ jail as well as caning for individuals convicted of incest. However, a child’s testimony is acceptable only when there is corroborating evidence.
The report also gave numbers from the Shariah Judiciary Department, which reported 10,270 child marriage applications from 2005 to 2015. The minimum age of marriage in Malaysia is 18 for men and 16 for women. Muslim women younger than 16 may marry with the approval of a shariah court.
In some cases, the report said, authorities treated early marriage as a solution to statutory rape. It gave the example of a man who, in June 2016, was acquitted of statutory rape after marrying the 14-year-old victim.
The report also addressed the issue of street children, which it said was a problem especially in Sabah. It said estimates of the number of children living on the streets ranged from a few hundred to 15,000. Many of them were born to illegal immigrant parents, some of whom were deported, the report added.
The children who were left without guardians lacked citizenship and access to schooling or other government-provided support. The report said many of them resorted to menial labour, criminal activities, begging and prostitution to survive.
The report noted that Malaysia is not a party to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.