THE nation was shocked by the death of a polite, promising young boy who was killed in a barbaric act of senseless, mindless, heartless assault by equally young people he probably considered friends. Why?

Because Nhaveen was different.

The poor boy had allegedly been bullied for years to the knowledge of his family, the bullies’ parents, multiple teachers, friends and neighbours.

Barely two weeks before that, another young man, who enrolled to serve his country, died after days of torture in the hands of his close friends and their friends. Why?

Someone accused Zulfarhan of stealing a laptop, something not proven even after his tragic death.

He had begged his torturers to stop, for days, and had been seen by a doctor, and multiple other people, with abuse and burn marks before he died.

Twin tragedies, barely two weeks apart makes us wonder; what is the price of a human life to us?

How do we draw the line between minding our own business and standing up against something wrong?

With all the effort and campaigns and taskforces set up, and awareness programmes and hotlines and money spent on them, we should have by now have been able to create a safe environment for our children. Death by bullying should be the last thing they fear.

Questions undoubtedly have and will continue to be asked for weeks to come.

How did their murderers become so cruel?

Why didn’t the many people who had the opportunity to do so, intervene?

It isn’t completely fair to blame the teachers alone. They do have after all, multiple duties – teaching, administrative tasks, co-curricular activities, seminars and after school programmes all packed into eight and a half hours of work.

There are multiple agencies involved other than the Ministry of Education – Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development, the police and the Ministry of Health are equal stakeholders in this.

While the police and MOE have worked together for many years to stamp out gangsterism in schools, perhaps this should extend to bullying and ragging and other unhealthy cultures that have interlocked with the gang problem and feed off each other.

There’s a difference between rough joking and school fights between hormone-fuelled teenagers. with targetted violence against a particular person or group.

Teachers should not be allowed to project their own prejudices in class. As authority figures, their words and actions carry a lot of impact on impressionable minds. If it’s ‘OK’ for a teacher to discriminate against a particular race or religion, or use words like ‘keling’ or ‘pondan’ or ‘bangang’ against a student they may not like, it will not be long before the other students join in on the bandwagon to use those terms against their schoolmate out of either the mistaken assumption that it is okay, or worse, the desire to curry favour from that teacher.

There is no point teaching all the Pendidikan Moral or Agama, or forcing kids to join a uniformed body and march up and down the road till lunch time every Saturday if the fundamentals are still not in its right place.

Likewise, there is a difference between seniors ragging or hazing their juniors in a good-natured way to pass down tradition or values, to just bigger-sized students taking out their life’s frustrations on younger students who cannot fight back.

For example, asking them to sing the school song, waving the school flag while running around the quadrangle is very different from hitting their heads against the toilet bowl with military boots.

You can close one eye to one out of respect for a school or university tradition but not the other.

Parents should be held accountable for their children’s actions, but should also be supported and empowered to do so. While troubled children and bullies are also juveniles and have rights, the people around them too have the right to study, work, live and play in peace.

The public also should play their part – report to the authorities whenever you suspect a bullying case is taking place. Whether it is in a clinic or a burger stall or a school.

We should all play our role in protecting our children. – June 20, 2017.

* Emmanuel Joseph firmly believes that Klang is the best place on Earth, and that motivated people can do far more good than any leader with motive.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.