Femicide in Malaysia: Why We Must Name It

Content note: This article discusses and describes sensitive topics. If you are currently experiencing abuse or are in early recovery from coercive control, please read with care, or seek support from Samaritans.

Introduction

A man stabs a 19-year-old college student 61 times and dumps her body by the roadside. In Sabah, a former fiancé dismembers a woman and scatters her body parts across rubbish bins. The language of “murder” no longer covers what happened. The language of “domestic dispute” collapses under the weight of the act. Survivors who have lived inside coercive control recognize this pattern immediately. The escalation. The possessiveness. The rage that follows rejection. These killings are not aberrations. They are femicide.

Femicide is the killing of women because they are women. In Malaysia, three recent cases have forced a national reckoning with this crime. Dr. Haezreena Begum Abdul Hamid, criminologist and Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law at Universiti Malaya, has called for the country to name what is happening. Her May 9, 2026 op-ed in Malay Mail argues that Malaysia must stop treating gendered killings as ordinary homicides.¹ Internationally, the legal recognition of femicide as a distinct crime is now tracked in dedicated research instruments, including the Global Femicide Legislation Index.

The Three Cases That Shifted the Conversation

In Kelantan, a perpetrator killed a 19-year-old college student with 61 stab wounds.² He discarded her body by the roadside. In Sabah, a man allegedly murdered and dismembered his former fiancée after their engagement ended.³ Investigators found her remains in rubbish bins across Sepanggar. In Perak, another woman died in a violent attack that drew national attention to institutional failures around women’s safety.⁴

Dr. Haezreena describes these cases as part of a continuum, not a coincidence. Furthermore, she points to specific criminological markers that distinguish femicide from other forms of homicide. The number of stab wounds matters. The dismemberment matters. The intimate relationship between perpetrator and victim matters. These details are not random.

What Excessive Violence Reveals About Motive

Overkill is a recognized criminological pattern. Extreme stabbing, mutilation, and dismemberment usually point to rage, humiliation, and a desire to dominate the victim symbolically. Consequently, the perpetrator is not only ending a life. He is punishing her for leaving, for refusing, for existing on her own terms.

Practitioner experience with survivors of severe coercive control shows the same pattern in cases that did not end in death.⁵ The violence escalates when the perpetrator loses control. Rejection triggers rage. Separation triggers retaliation. Many survivors describe the period after leaving as the most dangerous of their lives.

Why Femicide Is Different From Homicide

Diana Russell popularized the term femicide at the 1976 International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women in Brussels. Importantly, Russell credited the word itself to Carol Orlock, an American writer who coined it in an unpublished anthology. Russell’s contribution was to give the term its political and analytical force. Femicide is not simply the death of a woman. It is the killing of a woman because she is a woman, often within contexts of male possessiveness, jealousy, rejection, or perceived loss of ownership.

Dr. Haezreena makes the same point in her op-ed. Many perpetrators cannot accept rejection or the autonomy of women. Therefore, violence becomes a tool to reclaim dominance. The killing sends a message to her, to her family, and to other women who might consider leaving.

The Warning Signs That Come Before the Killing

Femicide rarely begins with murder. Typically, it begins with stalking, threats, emotional abuse, coercive control, jealousy, monitoring of movements, and social isolation. In most documented femicide cases worldwide, the warning signs were visible long before the killing.

Yet society frequently normalizes these signs. We hear phrases like “he was just jealous.” We hear “they were having relationship problems.” We hear “she should have left earlier.” These narratives shift attention from the perpetrator’s violence onto the victim’s choices. More dangerously, they obscure the structural reality. Many women live under constant fear and coercion long before a perpetrator kills them.

The Legal Gap in Malaysia

Malaysia does not recognize femicide as a distinct crime.⁶ Currently, prosecutors charge killings of women under general homicide provisions in the Penal Code, primarily Sections 302 and 307. These provisions do not capture the gendered motives, the coercive history, or the pattern of escalation that typically precedes the killing.

By contrast, several Latin American countries have written femicide into their penal codes. Mexico, Chile, Argentina, and others now treat the killing of a woman because she is a woman as a separately defined offense. The Global Femicide Legislation Index documents these frameworks, tracking how different jurisdictions criminalize and prosecute gender-based killing.

Why Legal Recognition Matters

Naming the crime changes how courts investigate, prosecute, and prevent it. Specifically, femicide statutes require courts to consider the gendered nature of the violence. They also require data collection, which is essential for understanding prevalence and risk factors. Without specific legislation, femicide remains invisible inside general homicide statistics.

Malaysia is not alone in this gap. Many countries still prosecute femicide under general homicide laws. However, the international momentum is shifting. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, alongside UN Women, now publishes annual global femicide data and urges member states to enact specific legislation.

Coercive Control as the Precursor to Femicide

The pattern Dr. Haezreena describes — stalking, isolation, jealousy, threats, monitoring — has a name. It is coercive control. Susan Schechter introduced the framework to forensic social worker Evan Stark, who then developed it in his 2007 book Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life, published by Oxford University Press.^{7 8}

Coercive control is a gendered crime. Specifically, it is overwhelmingly perpetrated by men against women. Stark describes it as the creation of “mini regimes of patriarchy” inside private relationships. The perpetrator deprives the woman of liberty, autonomy, and sometimes life itself.

How Coercive Control Escalates to Lethal Violence

Research and practitioner experience converge on a sobering pattern. Coercive control is the strongest behavioral predictor of intimate partner femicide. Specifically, the period during and after separation carries the highest risk. Perpetrators most often kill women when they try to leave, after they have left, or when the perpetrator perceives that they have moved on emotionally.

In practitioner work with survivors of severe and treatment-resistant coercive control, the pattern is consistent. Threats often precede physical violence. Stalking often precedes threats. Surveillance and monitoring often precede stalking. Each stage normalizes the next.

Who Is Dr. Haezreena Begum Abdul Hamid?

Dr. Haezreena Begum Abdul Hamid is a criminologist and Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law at Universiti Malaya. She holds a PhD in Criminology from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. The Malaysian Bar admitted her in 1997. Before entering academia, she practiced law in Malaysian courts for over two decades.

Her research covers human trafficking, gender-based violence, victimization, terrorism, and sexual violence. Notably, she takes an immersive approach, working directly with survivors of trafficking, prisoners, former combatants, and returnees from conflict zones. Her published work appears in journals including Anti-Trafficking Review, the New Zealand Women’s Studies Journal, and the University of Malaya Journal of Law and Policy.

Why Her Intervention Matters

Dr. Haezreena is not writing as an outsider. She is writing as a criminologist with extensive direct experience of how violence against women unfolds inside Malaysian legal and social systems. Her call for Malaysia to confront femicide carries the weight of someone who has interviewed victims, studied prosecution patterns, and worked alongside survivors.

The Cultural and Institutional Failures Behind Femicide

Dr. Haezreena identifies several layers of failure. First, cultural narratives teach some men to view women as extensions of male ownership rather than as autonomous human beings. Second, institutions frequently dismiss warning signs. Police, courts, and community leaders often treat reports of stalking, harassment, and coercive behavior as private matters until tragedy strikes.

Third, families and communities sometimes hesitate to intervene. Victims themselves may stay trapped because of fear, emotional manipulation, financial dependence, shame, or the absence of meaningful protection. Then society reacts with shock after the killing. Yet the warning signs were almost always present.

The Pattern Society Tolerates

Femicide rarely begins with murder. Instead, it usually begins with control that society tolerated, threats that institutions ignored, and violence that families minimized. Fear becomes something women are expected to endure silently.

The Global Femicide Legislation Index captures similar patterns globally, tracking not only legislation but also the cultural and institutional contexts that allow femicide to continue.⁹

For a real-word example of the global crisis, read The Femicide of Rebecca Cheptegei: Coercive Control in Sports.

What Malaysia Needs Now

Dr. Haezreena’s call to action is clear. Malaysia needs stronger early intervention mechanisms. It needs serious institutional responses to coercive control and stalking. It needs better protection systems for women facing threats. It needs improved risk assessment frameworks. Above all, it needs public awareness of the warning signs that precede escalating violence.

Legal reform sits at the center of this. Specifically, Malaysia needs to define femicide in its Penal Code. Furthermore, it needs to invest in gender-sensitive training for police, prosecutors, and the judiciary. It needs systematic data collection on gender-based killings. Finally, it needs robust support services — shelters, legal aid, counseling — for women at risk.

The Cost of Continued Inaction

Every femicide carries a story of warnings that institutions dismissed. Each case represents a system that failed to protect a woman whose life was already under threat. Until Malaysia names, counts, and prosecutes femicide as the gendered crime it is, the killings will continue.

The Survivor Perspective

For survivors of coercive control, Dr. Haezreena’s op-ed will read as recognition. The escalation she describes. Rage at rejection. Dehumanization. The body of the victim becoming a site of control even after death. These are not abstract patterns. They are lived experiences.

Practitioner work with survivors of severe narcissistic abuse and coercive control confirms what Dr. Haezreena writes. The men who kill are not strangers in a public health crisis. They are intimate partners, ex-partners, and family members. They are men who could not accept rejection. They are men whose violence society tolerated until it became fatal.

Why Naming Femicide Helps Survivors

When the crime has a name, the survivor can place her experience inside a recognized pattern. She is not a private failure. She is not someone who “should have left earlier.” She carries the marks of a documented form of gendered violence, and her fear made complete sense.

Naming femicide also helps prevent it. When professionals recognize warning signs as part of a known continuum, intervention becomes possible earlier. The work of researchers like Dr. Haezreena, and the documentation efforts of instruments like the Global Femicide Legislation Index, contribute to that prevention.

If You Recognize Yourself in This Article

If the patterns described here feel familiar, you are not alone. Coercive control affects women across every country, every economic class, and every religion. Furthermore, it does not require physical violence to be lethal. Many women whom intimate partners later killed did not describe themselves as victims of physical abuse until very late.

Support is available. Specifically, the platform offers a free 15-minute consultation to discuss your situation. For sustained support, narcissistic abuse recovery coaching provides specialist work for survivors of severe and treatment-resistant cases.

A Note on Language

This article uses the language of femicide deliberately. The word matters because the alternative — “murder,” “domestic dispute,” “relationship problems” — hides what is actually happening. Furthermore, it places the burden of explanation back on the woman who died, asking why she didn’t leave sooner. Femicide, by contrast, names the structural reality.

Dr. Haezreena’s intervention is an act of professional courage. In a country where many people still treat domestic abuse as a private matter, speaking plainly about gendered violence takes work. Her op-ed should be read widely, debated seriously, and used as a foundation for the legal reform Malaysia urgently needs.

Related Links

• Coercive Control & Femicide Research
• National Femicide Rates in the United States
• The Alarming Rate of Black Femicide
• Global Femicide Crisis: A Woman Is Killed Every 10 Minutes
• Femicide Report Reveals Systemic Failures In Law Enforcement

Frequently Asked Questions

References

1. Abdul Hamid, H. B. (2026, May 9). We need to talk about femicide. Malay Mail. Retrieved from https://www.malaymail.com/news/what-you-think/2026/05/09/we-need-to-talk-about-femicide-haezreena-begum-abdul-hamid/219286 ↩︎
2. Mahmood, K. (2026). Malaysia: 61 stab wounds and a relationship that ends with murder. Independent Singapore. ↩︎
3. (N/A). (2026). Sabah body parts murder: 71-year-old man charged with murder, dismemberment of fiancée, 44. The Straight Times. ↩︎
4. Arif, Z.M. (2026). Perak govt extends counseling support to family of teen stabbed 61 times. New Straight Times. ↩︎
5. Stark, E. (2007). Coercive control: How men entrap women in personal life. Oxford University Press. ↩︎
6. Women’s Aid Organisation. (2024). Media monitoring report on femicide in Malaysia, January–August 2024. WAO. ↩︎
7. Schechter, S. (1982). Women and Male Violence: The Vision and Struggles of the Battered Women’s Movement. South End Press. ↩︎
8. Stark. 2007. ↩︎
9. Wakefield, M. (2026). The Global Femicide Legislation Index. Narcissistic Abuse Rehab. ↩︎

Manya Wakefield

Website |  + postsBio ⮌

Manya Wakefield is a narcissistic abuse recovery coach, coercive trauma specialist, and the developer of the Coercive Trauma Recovery Method™ and TENEL™ (Traumatic Exposure to Narcissism in Early Life) — proprietary recovery frameworks built from seven years of direct professional work with survivors of coercive control, narcissistic abuse, and Adult Children of Narcissists. Both frameworks have been reviewed by Dr. Michael Kinsey, PhD, clinical psychologist, New School for Social Research. She is the founder of Narcissistic Abuse Rehab, a global social impact platform launched in 2019 to support survivors through evidence-based recovery frameworks. Manya is the author of Are You In An Emotionally Abusive Relationship (2019), a resource used in domestic violence recovery groups worldwide. Her original research contributions include the Global Coercive Control Legislation Index (2020) — the first systematic index of its kind on the web — and the Global Femicide Legislation Index (2026), comprehensive legal references used by advocates, legal professionals, and policymakers internationally, cited in peer-reviewed publications including the Southern Illinois University Law Journal, Palgrave Macmillan, and the University of Agder. Her expertise has been featured in Newsweek, Elle, Cosmopolitan, HuffPost, Parade, and YourTango. She hosts the Narcissistic Abuse Rehab Podcast, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music. All content on this site reflects Manya's direct professional experience working with survivors of narcissistic abuse and coercive control, her published research, and her ongoing advocacy work.

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