Protecting the victims' Legal Rights

I guess from now till the Election Day, we would be seeing more of Pak Lah's posters than Sharlinie's, hear more over radio & tv of the great deeds and promises of the BN and the "empty barreled" BA than news of Sharlinie's, and talk more about politics than concerns over our children's safety in the wake of Nurin's, Preeshena's and Sharlinie's mind boggling stories.

Well, this is only natural as the GE only come once every 4 or 5 years while child kidnaping/abuse/murder are now becoming much more frequent. One after the other making it as if part of the Malaysia's everyday stories.

Nurin's stories are now almost history, nothing much is happening. The murderer remained unidentified and the autopsy distributor, though identified, remained scot free.

While Malaysians in general will temporarily be focussing on matters pertaining to the future of the country by deciding whom they want to choose to form the government, there will be a group of Malaysians who will still be talking about the sad stories of the tragic cases.

This weekend, at the UKM Bangi Campus, the students of the University's Law Faculty would be organising a "People & Law" Seminar that would be focussing on the Rights of Victims.

I'm invited to deliver a talk, a short talk that is, on our experience on how the law and rights of the vitim was applied in Nurin's tragedy. Of course, I would have lots of things to say and I hope that I would be able to deliver them eloquently so that the public would understand the trauma, sufferings, shame, shock etc. etc. inflicted onto the family of the victim of which by the way would also be the victim itself.

I hope that with the dialog session with the law undergraduates and professors that follows, we (the family) would also be able to learn a thing or two on the rights of the family to correct any wrongs.

Talking about the wrongs in Nurin's case, there are at least 5 wrongs (that I could think of) that surely need to be corrected. They are :- 1. Initial inaction; 2. Speculative Statements and Press Reportings; 3. Leakage of DNA Results where parents being the last to know about it; 4. Distribution of Autopsy Pictures and 5. Commercial Dramatisation with slanderous messages.

All these matters are currently in the hands of our attorney. But since the Lingam's Royal Inquiry is taking precedence, ours will come in later. But don't get us wrong, all these wrongs are not our real priority, our priority is to get the murderer so that justice could be given to Nurin and most importantly, so that other children could be safer with the monster taken off our streets.

But the wrongs must still be highlighted so that no other victim would be experiencing the same wrongful treatment that Nurin's parents had to endure. Nurin Alert is a product to correct a wrong. Hopefully more other products could be introduced to safeguard the victim in relation to the other wrongs as mentioned earlier on.

Good Night & Happy Voting

Jasni AJ