Outrage in Malaysia over children in cages at Perak home

IPOH — The grainy picture was harrowing — two children standing behind metal gates in narrow white-walled enclosures that resembled animal pens.

The photo — taken by a visitor to a home for the disabled in Batu Gajah, Perak and widely shared on Facebook — sparked a public outcry and prompted a visit from the Malaysian welfare department and the police.

The owner of the home has defended the practice, calling the enclosures “special cubicles” used to isolate violent residents, and describing it as a step up from the previous practice of tying their hands with ropes.

Reporters who turned up at the Perak Welfare Home for Disabled Children described an overwhelming smell of urine in the area. They described a sheltered space, an extension of the main building, which had 10 cages where the home’s violent residents are kept from 9pm to 6am daily. The cages are just big enough for a single mattress. Nearby is a single open toilet and bath.

The home’s chairman, Mr R Sivalingam, said they had no choice but to keep the violent ones locked up to protect the other residents.

“We have cases of residents wanting to remove the eyeballs of other residents. Sometimes they will strip the other inmates or try to bite them,” he said. “There are also times where they will throw faeces at other residents or eat their own excrement.”

The home, which began operations in 1968, houses 47 residents aged between 15 and 60 with multiple disabilities. The home has 12 workers, including five men.

“Those 10 kept inside the cages are the ones with severe mental retardation,” he said.

He said previously, workers at the home would tie the hands of the 10 with ropes, but after complaints from their parents, they were kept in cages instead.

“It looks like a cage, but it is actually a special cubicle,” he said.

Since putting the violent ones in cages in 2006, he said, there had been no complaints from their parents until the pictures went viral on Sunday.

“Some people do not understand why we have to keep them in cages. They can come and query us, and we will try to explain it to them,” he said, adding the home also welcomed feedback on the best way to handle residents with violent tendencies.

“This isn’t abuse, but a safety measure. The person who distributed the images may not have obtained the full picture of the situation,” he said.

The photo was taken and posted on social media by a young woman named Vivien, who went to the home with her family to visit an aunt who is a resident there. She said she stumbled upon the extension and described it as dark and smelling of urine, faeces and disinfectant. Her aunt, she said, is kept in another area for disabled women and well looked-after.

She posted the photo on Facebook, and friends urged her to report the matter to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), which she said she did, and to the media and the Malaysian Welfare Department. A website, World of Buzz, picked up her story with the headline “Malaysian girl discovers shocking scene of disabled kids locked up in cages like dogs” and posted more photos of the facility.

After the photos went viral, officers from the Welfare Department visited the home. “They were fine with our way of handling the residents,” Mr Sivalingam said.

Kinta District Welfare Department officer Noor Hanizah Zulkafli said those kept in the cages were five men and five women between 20 and 49 years old. “The home is registered with the Welfare Department, and its operating licence is valid until 2021,” she said.

Deputy Women, Family and Community Development Minister Chew Mei Fun said psychiatrists would be sent to the home to assess the residents to verify if they had aggressive tendencies.

Perak acting police chief Hasnan Hassan said that so far, the police had not received any reports from the public on the caged compartments.

“The police went to the home soon after the news went viral, and checks found that there has been no wrongdoing by the home’s management,” he said.

Still, some have taken to social media to express outrage at the practice. “It breaks my heart seeing this sort of thing, when people treat animals better than humans,” a Luke Hakim wrote on Facebook. AGENCIES