Quick Facts
Biography
Datuk Shabudin Yahaya (Shabudin bin Yahaya) is a Malaysian politician. He is the Member of the Parliament of Malaysia for the seat of Tasek Gelugor. He is the member of United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) which is part of the nation ruling coalition Barisan Nasional. He is also a former Syariah Court judge. He is notable as he opposes an amendment to be added in the Sexual Offences Against Children Bill 2017 and stated that the people who performed statutory rape are able to marry the victim without any punishment.
Debate of Sexual Offences Against Children Bill 2017
Background
At about 4:10 pm Malaysia Standard Time (UTC+08:00) on 4 April 2017, Teo Nie Ching, a Member of Parliament for Kulai had proposed for a new amendment (15A) for the Sexual Offences Against Children Bill 2017, stating that child marriage should be banned. She stated that Malaysia had signed a United Nations resolution during October 2013. Malaysia also had signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the 16th article of the treaty writes the freedom to choose a spouse and to enter into marriage only with free and full consent. She emphasised that Malaysian's children cannot have the capacity to have free and full consent because they still cannot smoke cigarette, drive a car and vote until they reached the age of 21.
She later cited that at 30 November 2015, the deputy of the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development made a statement that the government does not support marriage under 18, the Prime Minister's Department expressed the serious issues of child marriage on 12 April 2016 and the Spouse of the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Rosmah Mansor stated that the Malaysian have the power to increase the minimum age of marriage from 16 to 18.
She also gave out some cases of adults marrying underage children in Malaysia and claimed that the bride divorced soon after and some of their husband is actually a rapist. The chances of them dying is five times higher than a normal adult woman and they cannot continue their studies after marrying. She stated that the other Islamic country like Algeria, Egypt and Morocco's minimum marriage age is 18 years old and asked why Malaysia cannot be the same as theirs.
Debate
Shabudin start his speech at 4:24 pm Malaysia Standard Time (UTC+08:00) about what Teo Nie Cheng had said previously.