Thursday, May 15, 2008

Stop This Shit!

With previous blogs, I had the tendency to lose interest with blogging once the initial excitement got diluted with time. Hence the reason I told myself I will not create another blog. However, I'm back, willing to go back on my word, if only because of her and people like her:


18-year-old, Too Hui Min.

The National Service trainee who died of a colon infection.

I am shocked. No, not 'was', I still am! I am shocked that an 18 year old is allowed to just die while undergoing training in a program that is deemed 'necessary' by a Government that had already experienced casualties and other such unwarranted incidents during current and previous NS programs!

And no, I'm not talking about casualties sustained while at war and defending the country, dying with honor.

I'm talking about kids dying and falling sick due to diseases, diseases which are treatable, which you just shouldn't hear of young healthy teenagers dying of these days!

My sincere condolences go out to the family and friends of the late Hui Min, and I can only imagine the agony of having raised a child for 18 years only to have her die the moment they took their eyes of her for a moment, trusting she was under the protection and care of others who deemed her in need of some bullshit 3-month summer camp that is supposed to be for the sake of instilling semangat muhibah dan patriotik in our country's youths! And in that time, they get to learn how to shoot a few rifles and some basic survival skills if they were to one day end up with no jobs and had to live off the land in some forest somewhere.

Well that's not how they promote it, but heck that's the way I see it! Come on, you expect me to believe that these kids, who are mostly there simply because it's compulsory that if their names get 'picked out of the hat' they have to attend this so-called National Service training program else they could be charged in court, are expected to learn and remember all these 'survival skills' after only 3 months of most likely going through it for the first time? Really? Whatever you say, I'm not buying it.

More importantly, why have a fucking National Service program that is based on similar programs run by other countries? I mean, it's not like we'll ever need our rakyat to take up arms to defend the country anytime soon. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the key job description of our local police officers and military personnel? And other countries like Singapore and Switzerland makes it compulsory that this program is undertaken by ALL citizens of the country, once they reach a certain age, for at least 2 years! Now there's something! I mean, I would rather trust people who had undergone 2 years of training to defend my homeland rather than kids who only shot a few rounds in 3 months, wouldn't you? And these countries have a justified purpose of doing such programs, mainly due to their small population which can't support or depend on their limited military personnel!

In short, this 3-month summer camp that the Government tries to pass up as "National Service" is a fucking joke to me! It's also another way they get to feed their cronies more tax-payers' money! Hey, I smoke, I pay the damn taxes for my cigarettes, so I have a fucking say in the matter of what I want my money to be used for! And killing innocent 18-year-old kids IS NOT ONE OF THEM!

The death of a trainee in April, now another one dies in May, while another camp, Semanggol, is under quarantine for having some 100 trainees affected by an unidentified fever! Now, with all these happening, we should scrap or at least put a hold on the program and send all the unaffected trainees back home right? This is an excerpt from the NST Online on 10/5/2008:
National Service Training Department director-general Datuk Abdul Hadi Awang Kecil reiterated that the training programme will not be scrapped "just because of one or two deaths (this year)".

"It is our policy that the NS camps go on. What we are doing now is to rectify the problem," he told the New Straits Times.

He was commenting on calls by bloggers for the scrapping of the programme following the death of 18-year-old Too Hui Min on Wednesday. She was the 16th NS trainee to have died during training since the programme began four years ago.
16 deaths in 4 years. That means an average of 4 deaths a year. And he has the audacity to say this program won't be scrapped "just because of one or two deaths (this year)". How many deaths does it take to figure out there's something wrong?

Words fail me at this point. I could only imagine if it was his son or daughter that was killed in one of these 'death camps' he would be singing a different tune. I pray that these people, who have the lives of thousands of innocents in their hands, would come to their senses and that needless incidents such as that which has befall the family of Too Hui Min will never happen again.

For the moment though, I won't be encouraging anyone I know to attend these death camps! As for the penalties of that, well...

I DON'T GIVE TWO FUCKS!

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