Much has been written about the murder of Canny Ong. The death of an innocent lady under such violent circumstances has proven to have a significant impact for the powers-that-be and the average woman on the street. The predictable responses, the "Stop the Violence" campaigns, the striking of fear in the hearts of women everywhere.
It took the death of a woman to achieve this. Depending on how long our memories are, her death would not have been in vain.
But think about it: is anything necessarily different? Is the environment that we leave in today necessarily any more dangerous than the one that existed prior to Canny's death? With the responses from the government, from the media, from the people, are we necessarily any safer? I say nay to both questions.
Women were getting raped, murdered and abused long before the Malaysian society heard of Canny. Death in the car park? Its happened before. Rape in lonely highways or alleys? An everyday affair in the big cities. The only difference with Canny was the grisly methods in which she met her death and the fact that it happened to a lady in a place which we all thought was safe. Its almost as though a non-existent invisible barrier has been breached, and that, somehow, has made us sit up and take notice. I wonder what does it say about us as a society that it took a death of such un-common circumstances to get our attention.
Unfortunately, shit happens. It happens to each of us, to others, to everyone. If there is a message that Canny's death brings to us, it should be this, a stark reminder of how shit can happen. Its unavoidable, its rarely preventable - when its going to happen, it WILL happen regardless.
Don't get me wrong. There are things that can be done to mitigate the dangers. Bring along pepper spray, take up self-defense classes, don't walk alone. These are precautions that we all should be aware of even before what happened to Canny. Her passing is regrettable, but let's not let it transform us into a paranoid, untrusting people.
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