KUALA LUMPUR: The government has no plans to follow countries like India and the United Kingdom in abolishing whipping as a punishment.
Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Mohamed Hanipa Maidin said Malaysia still regarded whipping as a relevant punishment unlike India and the UK.
Hanipa, whose portfolio is law, said these two countries regarded whipping as more penalising than educating the offender.
He noted that in Malaysia, the government’s stance was that whipping remained applicable in civil cases despite being different from the version meted out in the country’s syariah court system.
“The difference between civil and syariah punishment is the philosophy behind them. In Islam, the punishment is to educate while under the civil (legal system) it is to penalise,” he said during Question-and-Answer session at the Dewan Rakyat today.
He was answering a question from Nik Abduh Abdul Aziz (Pas-Bachok) on whether the government would review the implementation of whipping on humanitarian grounds.
In replying to a question from Datuk Abdullah Sani Abdul Hamid (PH-PKR-Kapar) on whether the government would abolish whipping completely and replace it with a custodial sentence, Hanipa said whipping penalty could be substituted with a longer jail sentence based on a certain criteria to become punitive.
“At the moment, there is no decision by the government to abolish whipping because it has long been carried out in the country.
“Even though I acknowledge that it has a deterrent effect (on offender), and we may have different views on it as the punishment causes pain, whipping is universally accepted whether in the scope of religion or outside of it.
“In fact, under current laws, it is mandatory for a medical officer to be present during whipping and the offender could still have the penalty changed (by the court).
