By Sholto Byrnes
Sunday, 24 April 2011
The Independent
Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia’s opposition leader, tomorrow faces the resumption of one of the less edifying cases to have been heard amid the colonnaded formality of the Kuala Lumpur High Court: his trial for allegedly sodomising a 25-year-old aide named Saiful Bukhari.
It is not the only scandal with which the former deputy prime minister, whose dismissal and first trial for sodomy made world headlines more than a decade ago, is dealing.
The man once feted as Newsweek’s “Asian of the Year”, whose supporters include Al Gore, the former US vice-president, and Paul Wolfowitz, a former World Bank president, is also accused of being the star of a 21-minute sex tape featuring a Chinese prostitute (by way of variation, female), a clip of which was briefly posted on YouTube.
But these are only two instances of the sexually related incidents that fill the country’s papers and gossip sites every day. So numerous are stories of physical misdemeanours in this conservative, Muslim-majority but essentially easygoing country that the question is being asked: are Malaysians obsessed with sex?
Within the past few days, it has emerged that the education department in the eastern state of Terengganu has set up a boot camp to which it has sent 66 schoolboys to deal with their “effeminate tendencies”.
“The severity of the symptoms vary. We understand that some people end up as homosexual,” said the department’s director, Razali Daud, “but we will do our best to limit the number. If left unchecked, it could become a problem for them, their families and society.” Continue reading “Sex scandals obsess Malaysia: the country with a one-track mind”