Malaysian women’s rights groups on Monday called for the deputy minister for family and women to resign, after the official sparked outrage by giving advice on wife-beating in an Instagram post.
In a two-minute video posted on Sunday, Siti Zailah said that husbands should first speak to their “unruly” wives then, if that does not work, sleep apart from them for three days and, finally, resort to the “physical touch approach” should a wife still prove to be too “stubborn” to comply.
“If the wife still refuses to take the advice, or change her behavior after the sleeping separation, then the husbands can try the physical touch approach, by striking her gently, to show his strictness and how much he wants her to change,” the official said in her video.
The deputy minister’s “advice” drew the ire of Malaysia’s women’s rights organizations, who accused her of normalizing domestic violence, which is outlawed in the Southeast Asian nation. An association of eight such groups, called Joint Action Group for Gender Equality (JAG), have called on Siti Zailah to resign over her words, accusing her of “perpetuating ideas as well as behaviors that are opposed to gender equality.”
Between 2020 and 2021 alone, there were 9,015 police reports of domestic violence in Malaysia, the association said in a statement on Monday, pointing out that this number does not include other reports received by various charities and women’s support organizations.
“As a minister who is meant to uphold gender equality and the rights of women to protection and safety, this is abhorrent, denies women the right to equality, their right to dignity and to be free from degrading treatment,” the statement said.
The group has also urged Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob to take immediate action on the matter. The appeal to the government was then signed by 11 other women’s rights organizations.
A Malaysian female MP and the former Vice-President of People's Justice Party, Nurul Izzah Anwar, slammed the deputy minister’s words on Monday, calling them “detrimental and contrary to the current reality and needs.” The MP added that Malaysia had seen an increase in domestic abuse during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Neither the government nor Siti Zailah herself have so far reacted to the outrage. The deputy minister, who is an MP for the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, has previously caused controversy after urging women to only speak to their husbands when given permission and only when their spouses have “finished eating, have prayed and are relaxed.”