Today I want to share the disgust expressed by a
TTDI resident. This article appeared in The Malaysian Insider’s SIDEVIEW:
Rich in your pocket, poor in your soul
- A disgusted TTDI resident
Death is never a pleasant subject. Doubly so if
the person chooses to take his or her own life in a public manner. On September
11, a foreign migrant worker from Nepal took his own life in the lush and posh
neighbourhood of Taman Tun Dr Ismail, Kuala Lumpur.
The deceased, as was revealed a day later, was
one of tens of thousands of migrant workers brought into Malaysia to work as a
helper in one of the generic "Kopitiam" chain restaurants which had
closed down over the month of Ramadan.
From then on, he had no work, no pay and no way
to go back to his beloved family and friends in Nepal. In essence, he was stuck
in not only an economic limbo but also a geographic limbo with little way out.
Under the mental strain of having had to pay the
eye-watering debt he owed to agents for his journey here, he took his own life
in the most public way on a rooftop of one of the shophouses where he lived.
This story unfortunately is a lot more common
than we think, what with employers and the system allowing for such migrant
workers to be exploited and abused in the worst possible manner. I shall
refrain from elaborating on this issue as being a non-expert, I am sure many of
you reading this are aware of their problems.
This is, however, about a handful of residents
of this so-called posh neighbourhood.
What happened, thanks to social media, was just
as shocking, if not more shocking than the suicide itself. TTDI has a community
page on Facebook where the residents communicate on lost and found pets, sale
of food, restaurant reviews, crimes and traffic problems. If you were to go to
the page, you would see a lot of petty postings such as of residents
complaining about their neighbours taking over the public nature strips outside
their houses. That is to be expected from residents of a posh enclave priding
themselves on being educated, well travelled and shall I say sophisticated.
On the morning of September 11, someone posted a
picture of the now deceased on the roof, asking for verification that such an
event is actually happening. Confirmations came in, with some people reporting
that people were shouting at the man, goading him to jump.
This sparked a debate on the Facebook page,
which revealed much about the hearts and minds of a few of the residents there.
One said he should just jump and get over it, one even said that there was no
way he could die from a relatively short height, which was of course proven
wrong.
This absolutely disgusted the majority of the
residents, me included. I have to caveat this because the most heartening thing
that came out of this was that a majority of the residents chided the few who
mocked, made fun of and assumed many things about the deceased. One even said
that he wished he had actually jumped, instead of rolling off the roof in an
undramatic fashion and falling to his death. To be fair, emergency services
were there with an air mattress but he evaded it so that death could embrace
him, to end his extremely miserable short life on this Earth (he was only 30
years old).
Some said that he was looking for attention and
if he indeed was seeking attention, can we blame him?
Some residents even posted the picture of the
corpse, uncovered and even videos of the “action”, all in the name of “educating”
everyone on this tragedy. The administrators then removed the videos and
pictures after an outcry. Of course the next day, some pictures were posted on
this event in the newspaper, accompanying the story on the suicide. Of course
being that editors are experts at self-censorship, less gory pictures were
published. The residents who had their pictures and videos removed from the
community page, in all their pompousness declared that if the newspapers could
publish it, why not them?
My answer to that is, it’s a question of taste
and respect to the deceased. While newspapers are out to sell more newspapers
and increase their revenue, are the people who posted it on the community page
out to garner a reputation for themselves?
Whilst they were not on-site goading the
deceased, the semi-anonymity of posting on Facebook or any social media does
not give them any immunity having played a small part in contributing to not
only this man's death, but any future would-be suicides. Mocking, bullying and
encouraging on social media is as good as them being there. Recent cases in the
US and UK have revealed how mass online bullying has encouraged a shockingly
high number of teenagers into committing suicide. Be it may that they were
troubled children in the first place, one of the rules of humanity which I
quote from Hippocrates is, "First, Do No Harm".
For it to come from a community that would help
each other look for lost pets, bring lost pets into their homes until their
owners were found, hold charity drives (yes, we do have a gaggle of social
climbers who hoot and toot about their charity work), have strays medically
treated with an ad hoc catch-and-release programme.
This contradiction in the character of a community in itself calls for people to have a long hard look at themselves. I am not asking for my neighbours to have rushed to the site and try to rescue him or try to talk him out of it. None of us are equipped with the necessary skills to do this. I am asking for something that is so simple to be and do. Just be a good human. Refrain from speaking ill of someone who has lost not only his mind, but also everything he has, and much much more.
I hope a lot of my neighbours, and I am
targeting the ones who mocked and later tried to aggressively justify why they
said what they said, that I hope one day you never have to lose your child in
this manner.
I don't have confidence though that this message
will get through to such people because they're so firmly ensconced in their
luxurious air-conditioned home, lying on their Egyptian cotton bed sheets
staring numbly at their 44” flat screen that their world is as far away as it
possibly can be from an indentured migrant worker's life. For all their air of
sophistication, attempts at writing in English, shopping at designer boutiques
and travels to exotic countries that they so proudly display on their Facebook
pages, their reactions just tell me how rotten they are inside.
From the good, kind people of TTDI, as most of
us are, I would like to extend my condolences and apologies to the family of
the Nepalese man. May he rest in peace. - September 12, 2013.
