The Citizens Against Rape (CAR) Campaign

In 1987, concerned members of the Malaysian public came together to form an initiative known as Citizens Against Rape ( CAR) in reaction to the brutal rape and murder of a nine year old girl, Ang May Hong. AWAM played an active role in this campaign. Through protests and street theatre shows, the group was successful in raising public awareness not only on the atrocities of this particular incident, but also about rape in general.

In 2003, AWAM decided to revive the CAR campaign following another violent rape and murder incident, this time of a young woman named Canny Ong. In so doing, we hoped to revive the spirit of the earlier campaign and facilitate local collective action that would allow Malaysians to come together and work towards a society free of rape.

The main goals of the current CAR campaign are:

• To gain support and foster community involvement in the fight against rape.
• To provide the authorities with recommendations for improving the standard of security in public spaces.
• To set-up a monitoring body to keep track of the situation regarding rape; and to monitor the authorities' commitment towards addressing rape and making public spaces safe.
• To raise public awareness on proposed amendments to laws relating to rape.

From this campaign, AWAM organised two concrete actions.

One was a rally at Kolej Damansara Utama (KDU), where over 500 members of the public attended to demonstrate their solidarity against incidences of rape that had taken place over the years in Malaysia. A call was made to these citizens to campaign against rape and support amendments to the laws relating to rape.

Another was a pilot study where we collected recommendations and concerns from members of the public on making public spaces safe and violence free.