New law for gun crime needed
IT was not difficult to foresee and expect that the crime situation and gang violence in our country would experience drastic changes after the Emergency Ordinance (EO) 1969 was repealed. This has to do with the subculture practised by gun dealers and the demographic shift of gangsters!
In other words, the floodgate for easily acquiring illegal firearms was opened!
Before the close of 1980, the gangsters in our country were predominantly Chinese but with a few Indians and Malays. Violent criminals and robbers were also Chinese and firearms like pistols and revolvers were available but rather sparse.
At the end of 1980, when rubber estates both big and small were closed down to make way for housing development, the estate workers who were mainly Indians were retrenched and compensated with low-cost apartments in town.
The young generation of Indians who were supposedly destined to work in the estates found themselves unemployable because they lacked education and skills for jobs in the open market! They had to find ways to survive, and one that was available was crime! That was the beginning of the influx of Indian criminals and the formation of Indian gangs! Initially, they concentrated on breaking into factories and hijacking containers and trucks! Their stolen goods were sold to Chinese triad gangs, and that was the beginning of the relationship between Chinese gangsters and the Indian gangs!
Due to their violent nature and involvement in physical and property crimes, many Indian gangsters were arrested and detained under the Emergency Ordinance 1969 (EO) in Simpang Renggam Detention Centre. Many of those detained under the EO were gun runners and smugglers.
To understand the sudden increase in murders and killings with guns and also the easy availability of firearms, one needs to know the correlation between the repeal of the EO and the subculture practised by gun dealers in South Thailand.
Before the EO was repealed, any gangster or hooligan wishing to acquire a gun directly from the gun dealers in South Thailand would not only find it impossible but might find himself being murdered because gun dealers DON’T deal with every Tom, Dick and Harry. They only deal with persons known or connected to them.
After the EO was repealed, all the detainees, among them gun runners and smugglers, were released from the detention centre.
It must be realised that while the veteran gun runners and smugglers were in the detention centre, they could have amassed quite a few followers who were interested in the business because the price difference for each type of gun in South Thailand and across the border is very high! Hence, gun-running and smuggling syndicates comprising younger Indians were born, which explains the exponential increase and availability of guns among Indian gangsters!
From the modus operandi of the latest reported cases of killing with firearms, it can be opined that they were executed by amateur hired killers. Professional hired killers per se neither operate with partners nor shoot at random, causing injuries to others apart from the intended target!
At present, it is understood that most Chinese gangs have been taken over by the Indian gangsters and the Chinese gangsters are only involved with stolen goods, drugs and underground vices!
The latest intelligence indicates that most of the Indian gangs also have many illegal immigrants such as Myanmar, Cambodians, Nepalese, Indonesians and Vietnamese among them.
The danger in this situation is that any of these illegal immigrants can be an amateur hired killer and vanish without anyone having knowledge of them. They may not be professional hired killers but they can be equally dangerous because they are illegal immigrants and thus cheap to hire!
To stay ahead of these hooligans and gangsters, it is imperative that gun dealers in South Thailand be “retained” or “maintained” and a covert intelligence network needs to be established.
A new stringent crime prevention law, which does not contain too many legal hindrances, needs to be legislated to enable the police to execute effective preventive action!
It is a known fact that most gangsters and syndicated violent criminals are more scared or worried of the repealed EO than being taken to court as they know they would not be convicted due to lack of witnesses. The police cannot be blamed for being ineffective against all these menaces when there is no appropriate law to help them!
If abuse of the law by enforcement agencies is the main worry, then the previous section in the repealed EO pertaining to habeas corpus should be incorporated!
It must be realised that when dealing with gangsters and violent syndicated criminals, action must be decisive and forceful. There is no such thing as taking the middle road! Countries that retained their preventive laws are relatively peaceful compared to us!
Let us not allow our society to fall to the level where triad and gang activities are beyond effective control!