Malaysian Lawmakers Just Passed an Important Anti-Stalking Bill

Malaysian lawmakers passed the country’s first-ever bill criminalizing stalking in early October. The new law, green-lit by Malaysia’s lower house in parliament, will criminalize repeated acts of aggression and nonviolent harassment, including following a person, sending them unsolicited items, loitering at their residences, and/or attempting to communicate with them unwantedly. Under the new regulation, acts legally considered as stalking will be punishable with a fine and/or up to three years in jail.

The amendment to the Malaysian penal code came years after advocacy from activists and rights organizations, as well as high-profile cases of violence against women that stemmed from stalking incidents. Last April, for example, a 31-year-old woman in Ipoh was killed after she was stabbed by her boyfriend in front of her young children. Authorities said she had lodged several police reports “against the man for breaking into her home and bothering her.”

That woman’s experience, though extreme, was hardly an anomaly; according to a Women’s Aid Organization (WAO) survey published in December 2020, around 88 percent of Malaysians have experienced an act associated with stalking. Twelve percent of over 1,000 respondents in the study said their experience of being stalked had involved threats of harm, while one in six said they had experienced stalking that led to actual harm.

Following the bill’s passing, Malaysian-based gender equality activist Tehmina Kaoosji took to Twitter to celebrate, saying that the law “helps protect 1000’s annually” and will help “prevent grievous injuries, even murders — often preceded by stalking.”

“The passage of anti-stalking law is a major milestone in gender-based violence policy in Malaysia,” Yu Ren-Chung, WAO deputy executive director, wrote on Facebook. “Enacting this law is just step one. But crucially, it will give authorities the power to stop stalking,” he said.

According to All Women’s Action Society (AWAM), prior to the passing of the anti-stalking bill, it was “difficult for the police to intervene or take action due to weak legislation” for “cases of stalking that do not involve physical violence.”

This was the reality despite the “debilitating psychological toll of such harassment on survivors and the potential for escalation into more atrocious forms of violence,” AWAM’s information and communications officer Jernell Tan Chia Ee told the FBomb.

Activists say there’s still more to do to ensure effective implementation of the newly passed law. Jernell said there may be limitations when it comes to cases of cyberstalking, especially doxxing, which she said is currently not within the scope of the bill. Overall, advocates also anticipate a “lack of streamlined awareness and/or gender sensitivity” among law enforcement officers about what constitutes stalking, especially cyberstalking, which “can contribute to survivors’ hesitation to come forward to seek redress, out of concerns that their experiences will not be taken seriously, because the frontliner either is unaware that stalking is a crime under the corresponding Penal Code provisions, or exhibits victim-blaming behaviors due to existing presumptions about stalking,” Jernell said, noting how stalking is sometimes perceived as a form of “romance.”

Once the bill is passed, “survivors of stalking from all walks of life will be able to access redress, from filing a police report to obtaining protection orders,” she added.