It Should Be Nurin Alert!

...because she made it all happen.

My take (in the NST today) on the child abduction alert system - to be called NUR (Nationwide Urgent Response) Alert -- to be formalized by the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry.

I can only guess why the ministry is not going to call it by its original name NURIN (Nationwide Urgent Response Information Network) Alert but I won't speculate.

So, as I have said, it should be called NURIN Alert. After all, if Nurin had not been brutalized and died, this plan to put an early alert system in place wouldn't happen. And, did I say that we all couldn't save her?

Oh -- you do remember Nurin Jazlin Jazimin, don't you? The 8 year-old who was abducted from somewhere near her home in Wangsa Maju, Kuala Lumpur on the night of Aug 20, 2007.

Someone dragged her into a van.

She was never to be seen again until Sept 17, about a month later at a location far from that pasar malam -- in PJS1, Petaling Jaya.

She was dead, her body crumpled, brutalized, she was thin, her hair shaven, and a cucumber was stuck in her....(never mind). The child suffered unimaginable pain and horror.

And her body was found in a gym bag.

In death, she was so unrecognizable. Her father, Jazimin Abdul Jalil could not even recognize her, he could not identify her. Perhaps it was just too much for him.

I can never forget that image of Nurin after her body was found -- her thin face, shorn head -- a pale shadow of her when she was alive.

The nation was shocked and outraged.

Immediately after her death, there was a move to begin pushing for something akin to AMBER Alert which is highly successful in the US in saving and rescuing abducted kids. The initiative was for NURIN Alert.

Also read THIS.

Such a system would have helped Jazimin in notifying the police, enforcement agencies and the media about Nurin's disappearance. The community would also be the eyes for these agencies.

When Jazimin first reported her disappearance to the police, he did not get much help. It was about 2 days after her disappearance that his plea was taken seriously.

To cut a story short, the initiative was supported by so many people including Shahrizat Jalil who was then the Women, Family and Community development Minister.

Anyway...it's now going to be NUR Alert.

It should be NURIN Alert.

Ask any Malaysian, they'd remember Nurin. She united us all in our anger and our shock.

We failed to save her. But we know she did not die in vain. So, let's do it right. Leave politics and political branding out of all this.

Do it for our children. Do it to save the next child!

And oh, did I forget to remind us all that Nurin's her killer was never caught.