Acting out of concern given the low success rate in charging the rapists, Democratic Action Party (DAP) Damansara Utama Assemblywoman Yeo Bee Yin last week launched a rape awareness campaign under the tagline “Rape is Rape, No Excuses.”
Her campaign video features three situations, sexual relations with an underage woman, sex without the consent of the woman and marital rape.
Citing statistics from the Home Ministry, she said that between 2005 and July 2014, a total of 28,471 rape cases had been reported, but only 16% of those cases had been were brought to court. Of these, only 765 cases (2.75%) saw the accused convicted.
“Many time rape is perceived as a women’s problem, but it is actually about men,” a posting on her website reads. “So the target audience for this video is the men.”
Hizbut Tahrir Malaysia, however, appear to take a different view of the matter, reports the Malay Mail Online.
Referring to marital rape, its spokesman Ustaz Abdul Hakim Othman was reported to have said that a Muslim does not need his wife’s consent to have sex with her as marriage gives a man a right to his spouse’s body.
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“Even if it is by force, it’s not sinful for him. The sin is on his wife,” he was quoted as saying, suggesting further that it would only be wrong if a certain degree of physical violence was involved.
If that is the position under Syariah law, then it may be quite different from the position of marital rape in criminal law, a senior lawyer told FMT today.
He pointed out that section 375A of the Penal Code provides that any man who causes hurt or fear of death or hurt to his wife in order to have sexual intercourse with her is guilty of an offence.
“Already gender equality activists in Malaysia suggest that section 375A does not go far enough because it limits the offence to causing or threatening to cause ‘hurt,’” he says, pointing out that more mature legal systems, including Australia and England, have had the marital exemption removed since the 1980s and the 1990s, respectively.
“The proposed implementation of hudud law may give rise over time to two divergent and irreconcilable positions between syariah law for Muslims and under the Penal Code for non-Muslims with each branch heading in opposite directions,” he warns.
He says that this would not merely affect substantive law but also matters of evidential procedure.
Ustaz Abdul Hakim was reported to have claimed that Islam does not accept DNA evidence in rape cases.
“[DNA] doesn’t prove rape,” he was quoted as saying. “Other evidence like wounds in the vagina that show penetration is still not proof that it is rape.”
According to Hizbut Tahrir Malaysia, Syariah law rape was required to be proved through the evidence of either two male witnesses or one male and two female witnesses.
“It will be ironic if DNA evidence, which played such a prominent part in Anwar Ibrahim’s sodomy trial, is considered inapplicable to rape case under Syariah law,” our senior lawyer adds.
