Media Statement by YB Kelvin Yii:
While i strongly welcome the collaboration between the Royal Malaysia Police(PDRM) and the Australian Federal Police that lead to the arrest of one of the world’s most wanted paedophiles — Alladin Lanim who operated out of Lundu, Sarawak, we do need to ask real questions what were our local PDRM doing all this while and how was he allowed to operate for more than a decade without being caught.
Fact is this is not the only time such a case has happened in Malaysia. It also took efforts from the UK police which captured Richard Huckle, dubbed Briton’s worst paedophile, in Kuala Lumpur who was later sentenced to 22 counts of life imprisonment in the United Kingdom in 2016 for sexually abusing around 200 children between 2006 and 2014, especially in Malaysia.
So this begs the question whether our police force are properly empowered and given the adequate training and resources, or they may have misplaced priorities. The Police institutions must be strengthen, and allowed to focus on real crimes to protect our people instead.
In case of Alladin, Lundu is actually a small place and it begs the questions why weren’t our local police aware of his activities.
I do hope that this serves as a wake up call for all of us especially for the government to takes crime related to children seriously and strengthen the federal police’s specialised Sexual, Women and Child Investigations Division.
This includes funding to equip law enforcement officers with the necessary technical and training expertise to crack down child sexual abuse and exploitation.
They cannot be dragging their feet anymore and allow our children especially those in the rural areas that may be more vulnerable to such suggestions to be exposed to such danger.
A holistic plan must be written up also to educate our children on such issues and ways to protect themselves and this must be incorporated in our education system and taught widely. Parents and teachers play and important role to empower and educate our children, but more must also be done to address this issue including law reforms to increase penalty and enforcement in Malaysia so that we do not become a reservoir for paedophile who prey on our vulnerable.
Even so,i do believe PDRM have to explain to be public, why are people like Alladin and even Richard Huckle allowed to operate on our shores for so long before being arrested. They owe the children as well as the many other children whose predators have gone undetected or only detected after years of abuse and society at large an clear explanation.
Kelvin Yii Lee Wuen
MP Bandar Kuching
