HUMAN Rights Watch (HRW) wants the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) to press Malaysia on issues concerning child marriage, marital rape, transgender rights, domestic worker and education.

In its submission dated May 24, HRW proposed a number of questions for CEDAW to raise with Malaysia.

HRW noted that Malaysia is one of the countries where transgender people can be arrested for wearing clothes not pertaining to their assigned sex.

“Under state Sharia (Islamic law) enactments, all 13 states and the Federal Territory prohibit ‘a man posing as a woman’ while three states prohibit ‘a woman posing as a man’. Four states have legalized fatwas against ‘pengkid’ a colloquial term for trans masculine identity,” the report said.

It also said that while Malaysia’s Court of Appeal had ruled in 2014 that Section 66 of the Negeri Sembilan’s Sharia enactment violated fundamental liberties as set out in the Federal Constitution, this decision was overruled by the Federal Court a year later on a technicality.

“Dozens of transgender women have been convicted. In June 2014, 16 transgender women and a child were arrested at a wedding in Negeri Sembilan. The women were sentenced to seven days in prison.

“While in June 2015, nine transgender women were arrested during a birthday party in Kelantan and were fined and jailed. In some cases, religious department officials or police have beaten transgender women or sought to extort money and sex from them during the arrests,” said HRW.

The report also noted transgender woman Sameera’s murder in Feb 2017 in Kuantan where the perpetrators have not been charged yet and the beating of transgender activist Nisha Ayub outside her apartment building.

HRW proposed that CEDAW calls upon the government to repeal Sharia laws that prohibit cross dressing, halt religious department raids targeting transgender people and prohibit government use of conversion therapy to try to change LGBT people.

HRW also asked CEDAW to look into child marriage, rape and marital rape issues in Malaysia.

“Malaysia has a dual legal system, civil and Sharia. Civil law sets the minimum age of marriage for non-Muslims at 18 but girls aged 16 and older can marry with the state’s chief minister’s permission.

“For Muslims, Islamic law has set 16 as the minimum age for girls but permits earlier marriages with no apparent minimum with the permission of the Sharia Court.

“While it is difficult to find reliable data on rate of child marriage in Malaysia, in May 2016 Women, Family and Community Development Ministry reported that 9,061 child marriages were recorded during the previous five years.”

HRW said after a visit to Malaysia in 2014, the UN special rapporteur on the right to health expressed concern that there were attempts to reduce the incidence of premarital sex, children born out of wedlock and child abandonment by encouraging underage marriages.

The report also noted that marital rape is not yet criminalized in Malaysia although the government had introduced the Domestic Violence (Amendment) Bill 2017.

“The bill included amendments to strengthen protection and expand the definition of domestic violence but does not include marital rape in the definition of domestic violence.”

HRW proposed that CEDAW asks the government to raise the minimum legal age of marriages for men and women to 18, investigate all complaints of child marriages and make marital rape a criminal offence.

The full report can be accessed here. – June 2, 2017.