The late Muhammad Amir Rusyaidi Muhammad Zaid

Amir’s father Muhammad Zaidi Abdul Rahman claimed in a police report that the cadet had been subjected to various forms of physical abuse, including being stepped on the chest, forced to perform horse-like movements with a trainer riding on his back, and ordered to jump like a kangaroo.

These activities on Nov 10 were allegedly captured on video by the trainer. The 25-year-old cadet collapsed following the training and was in a coma until his death.

Avoid this establishment like the plague

Koel : Are these training institutes recruiting uneducated goons and giving them charge over youths in training? May be time to scrutinise the credentials of these instructors and their suitability to be an instructor. Just because you served in the armed forces for instance, does not make you an instructor.

Is the current batch of instructors certified through a rigorous programme to take on these roles? If not, the problem starts right there. Parents who send their children to such institutes with untrained instructors or those with questionable training may be putting their children into the hands of some brute or bully.

And there may be many types of long term damage that arises from such exposure. And all this is cause for great alarm over the planned national service programme. Which minister is in charge of this misguided plan? Who are they recruiting as instructors for this programme?

What are their credentials and why is there no transparency in how this is being planned? Most importantly, what recourse for class action or suing the govt will there be if youths are hurt, injured or killed in the course of this programme? And how much are taxpayers paying for the entire cost of the programme? Has the media been given details?

Just a Malaysian : It's sad to see so many malay youth have their lives taken at such an early age. Bullying is rampant and signal an underlying psychological problem. Over restrictive upbringing, not allowing freedom of personal expression creates suppressed emotion. Inability to face societal expectations and pressures also contributes to this warped aggressive behaviour.

Learning from our leaders who uses threats, violence and screaming to express their disagreement also teaches our youth the wrong approach. Another malay institution crumbles. How long before our leaders realised that this country is rotting at the core. Pushing for more medieval approach actually compounds the problem.

But is there anyone out there ready to reboot malay mentality? To put it into a more positive, progressive mode ? Away from negative thoughts of blaming everyone else, fearing everything non malay or non Muslim? constantly has to defend against a lurking, imaginary enemy. Time for malay intellectuals to rise and promote a positive mental shift.

NoobMaster69 : Malay kill Malay kids, not an issue but few sign board without Malay words become bigger issue. No wonder NM refuses to let their kids join the armed forces. Now their reason is justified. Who wants to send their own kids to be treated like an animal. Malaysia should stop producing movies about how great their ATM are. This is clearly misleading youth.

Veteran 1972 : In 1980 they launched the Perista Plan to raise 4 Divisions of troops, because of the fall of Vietnam to the Red menace, heard of the Domino affect? They took in as many Officers as possible.

I was the first intake of the Officer Cadet School, I was already in the army I had an opportunity to become an officer. On the first day of orientation we had to run, it was a nightmare run. 99% were from the civilians. So I was with this batch of wannabe soldiers. The cost of that day was 2 dead and around 15 injured, I a trained soldier was injured too, so can you imagine what it was like for the civilians?

One was a young Malay cadet and the other was a young Chinese cadet. Those days I could accept that as the insurgency was very active. There was an inquiry by a coroner. The witnesses were too much in a daze to remember what happened. Not to worry, to balance it up, in that intake an Indian Officer too died whilst on tactics course, another hastily set up tactics wing in Kota Belud, Sabah.

It was happening for a long time. I guess most of you never heard about that. One of the Chief's of the Army experienced that.

Vijay47 : Give a man a civil service position, he thinks he is King. Give him a uniform also, he is convinced he is God. You will experience this attitude in full glory at the very step into a government department – your encounter with the Security Guard who believes that the only way to communicate with the public is through shouts and snarls.

The greater tragedy now is that such attitudes appear to have extended to almost every section within the Armed Forces and cases of cadets being abused or even dying are reported with frightening frequency. Like that professor asked, “Are our children attending these institutions to learn or to die?”

This latest UITM incident began on 10 November 2024 culminating in the death of Cadet Muhammad Amir Rusyaidi Muhammad Zaidi on 13 November 2024. Yet for weeks prior to the this, the media was full of reports on similar instances of assault, physical abuses, and even death. It is terrifying that despite all the attention, these acts of sadistic aggression continue with no restrain whatsoever.

One would have thought that the Defence Minister would have immediately issued a furious warning to all education institutions and other agencies under his Ministry that anyone committing such criminal acts would have hell to pay. And that this included the principal of the body concerned.

What action did the Minister take? Now the guns seem to be focussed on the trainer concerned, as they should be. But what about his superiors for their gross failure in supervision? Sadly, the only action we can expect is for the trainer to be thrown under the bus. And then it would be business as usual, another day at the office.