By Jerrica Fatima Ann
The writer is an educator based in Ipoh.
Must we await coffins before we call for change? The tragedy of Mohamad Nazmie’s case is not only his death by bullying, but also that we have condemned thirteen others to wasted futures by branding them killers and locking them away.
Twelve minors have been sentenced to indefinite detention; one young man condemned to life in prison. There is no mincing words about the savagery of their crime. Seventeen-year-old Mohamad Nazmie was beaten to death in his dormitory.
High Court judge Datuk Duncan Sikodol declared that the ruling was a stern warning to potential offenders—the court “will not tolerate such cruelty.”
While setting legal precedent in such a heinous crime is obviously justified, there is a question we shirk away from asking ourselves: Do these offenders even grasp the weight of their crime? If they do not, then the failure is ours—the parents, schools, and communities who raised them, yet failed to shape them.
Not long ago, a teenage student of mine who, after suffering weeks of taunts and shoves, told me he no longer saw any point in living. “I’ve complained,” he said, “but no one did anything.” When I confronted his classmates on the matter, they casually dismissed his complaints.
“Nothing happened, teacher.” “He started it.” “He was annoying, so he deserved it.” Their apathy was well-rehearsed and in sync. The truth I discovered later was heart-wrenching. The boy was not trying to provoke anyone. He was desperate to belong. His clumsy attempts at friendship came off as irritating, and for that he was bullied and shunned.
Does his awkwardness excuse their cruelty? Of course not. When I probed further, some students realised their mistake, while others stubbornly insisted he “deserved it.” Days later, the boy cut himself in frustration. I spoke to him and his classmates separately to drill some sense into both parties. Since then, we have kept a close watch on their behaviour.
For every headline like Nazmie’s—or Zara Qairina’s—there are hundreds of hidden scars beneath school uniforms; children either too ashamed or too afraid to speak. If we are honest, too many of our schools resemble breeding grounds for cruelty rather than places of learning. Classrooms where status determines worth, hostels where seniors ‘teach’ juniors with fists, academies where hazing masquerades as training, and even religious schools where silence is enforced in the face of abuse.
Should we really be shocked when violence escalates when we have long normalised it as ‘school culture’? It is no surprise that more than 7,600 bullying cases were reported in Malaysian schools last year, according to the South China Morning Post.
At the heart of this crisis lies our warped understanding of discipline. Too many adults shrug off bullying as ‘character-building’. But discipline is not cruelty. It is not humiliation. It is not violence. Real discipline means teaching responsibility, self-control, and respect—values that cannot be beaten into a child, but must be nurtured.
If justice is to mean anything after Nazmie’s death, it cannot stop at prison sentences. Justice must be preventive, and not only punitive. It must transform the culture that allows children to terrorise one another unchecked.
That means establishing real anti-bullying systems in every school—reporting channels that protect victims, consequences for teachers who ignore complaints, and proper training so staff can spot and stop bullying before it turns tragic.
We must dismantle toxic traditions—from hostel hazing to ‘senior discipline’—and stop excusing abuse as a ‘part of growing up.’ Both victims and aggressors need support, because both are casualties of the same violent culture: one bearing the wounds, the other inflicting them in the same manner they received their own personal wounds. It is a sick cycle.
The government now wants to amend the Education Act to allow for stricter enforcement. That is a start. But let us be clear that no law passed in Parliament will save a child if schools themselves refuse to act.
Enforcement must begin in classrooms, and not courtrooms. The verdict in Nazmie’s case cannot be the end of this conversation. If we let this tragedy fade into yet another headline, we will continue to create both victims and perpetrators.
Some argue that the court’s verdict was not only just, but necessary. That Nazmie’s untimely death demanded the harshest punishment. To show leniency, they say, will trivialise the crime. If children are old enough to kill, are they not old enough to be punished? Is severe sentencing not the only deterrent to prevent others from following the same violent path?
Maybe. Incarcerating the culprits may quench our thirst for justice, but it does nothing to change the conditions that originally bred the violence. We may lock these children away, but the culture that shaped them remains untouched—the hostels where fear is tradition, the classrooms where bullying is ‘just a joke’, the adults who look away.
Without addressing these root causes, sentencing becomes little more than society washing its hands of its own failures. Then the tragedy doubles: one child is dead, and thirteen others have lost their futures, with nothing learned and nothing changed. Is this justice?
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Ipoh Echo
