The issue came to light when a Japanese student at Universiti Malaya (UM) took to Facebook to post a statement detailing the sexual assault which he claimed he suffered at the hands of another foreign student, Malaysiakini reported.
The student, who only revealed his identity as Yo M, said the alleged assault occurred on April 30, at 8pm, at the Tun Ahmad Residential College dormitory in UM.
Claiming he was forcefully kissed and also forced to touch the other student’s penis, Yo said the attacker only ran away after he threatened to call the police.
In his statement, Yo also said he made a police report on the matter but his meeting with the university’s International Student Centre (ISC) a few days later did not work out as he had hoped.
“ISC asked me to accompany them to withdraw my police report, so that the university could have a smoother investigation,” he said in the statement, according to the portal.
Yo, 20, who started his semester at UM last September and left Malaysia recently, took the advice to withdraw the police report.
“I agreed to do it because I thought the police could not do anything, as I could not provide evidence,” he told Malaysiakini via a video call online.
According to the portal, an official at ISC denied the allegations made by Yo.
“I did not ask him to withdraw the police report,” he told Malaysiakini.
Yo’s shocking revelation on Facebook also mentioned another foreign student, this time from Taiwan, who faced the same sexual assault from the same perpetrator less than two weeks after Yo was assaulted.
“On May 12, another guy from Taiwan was attacked by the same (perpetrator) in a really similar situation. I heard about this incident from the victim,” Yo said on FB, adding that the ISC also told the Taiwanese student not to lodge any police report, upon being informed of the incident.
According to Malaysiakini, a hearing was held by the UM disciplinary board for Yo after which the suspect was suspended for one week over his actions.
However, another hearing for the Taiwanese student, which was scheduled for yesterday, was postponed for a month, with no date set as yet, because both the victim and suspect were unavailable. The Taiwanese student is said to have also returned home.
Yo told Malaysiakini that he hoped foreign universities would stop sending their students to UM.
“They (UM) are not really ready to accept all international students. When students are in dangerous situations they can’t take rapid action.
“They haven’t even come up with any ideas to share emergency alerts to international students. This means students won’t know about dangers until they get hurt,” he was quoted as saying by the portal.
Meanwhile, UM’s international and corporate relations office released a statement saying it “takes matters of this nature seriously and all complaints will be processed thoroughly”.
“We would like to confirm that a complaint has been received and given due process.
“As the investigation process has not completed, it would be inappropriate for us to comment or pre-empt on the case.
“The university also would like to ask for the public’s patience on this as each case requires proper investigation and attention,” the statement said.