Joke’s on police after Singapore comic stirs outrage over MH370

Interpol has been called in to help track down Jocelyn Chia for telling a tasteless joke.

Jocelyn Chia has conceded her joke — that Malaysians cannot visit Singapore because their ‘airplanes cannot fly’ — did not sit well out of context.

Malaysian police are swimming in unsolved cases.

They can’t seem to locate wanted IMDB swindler Jho Low. They have no explanation for the widely witnessed 2017 abduction of Pastor Raymond Koh, the 2019 “probable death by misadventure” of a British teenager with special needs who disappeared overnight from her family’s holiday cabin, nor the 2017 abduction and murder of Australian Anna Jenkins.

Nine years on, authorities have also yet to locate the missing Malaysian Airlines MH370 passenger plane that disappeared from air traffic control radars in March 2014, suspected to have crashed into the southern Indian Ocean with 239 people on board.

Yet it is the entirely un-mysterious case of a Singaporean comedian who cracked a tasteless joke about the MH370 disappearance that is consuming the Royal Malaysian constabulary this week as it seeks Interpol’s assistance to track her down.

Jocelyn Chia can surely not be that difficult to find. The Singaporean-born US citizen has a website complete with biography, usual comedy venues and details for her agent.

She even gave an interview to CNN on Sunday, conceding the joke she told at Manhattan’s Comedy Cellar this month for the 100th time – that Malaysians cannot visit Singapore because their “airplanes cannot fly”, a reference to the MH370 mystery – did not sit well out of context.

That has not assuaged Malaysian police chief Acryl Sani Abdullah Sani, who told media on Tuesday he wanted the international police body to help him find Chia, who is being investigated for breaching laws related to offensive online content and “intentional insult”.

Chia’s comedy routine has offended many on both sides of the border between perennial rivals, Malaysia and Singapore.

The ongoing search for answers into the MH370 disappearance continues to torment thousands of grief-stricken relatives in Malaysia, China, Australia and elsewhere.

Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan said he was “appalled by (Chia’s) horrendous statements” and apologised for the hurt caused.

Predictably, the issue has also been politicised in Malaysia, where the youth wing of the United Malays National Organisation marched to the US embassy in Kuala Lumpur on Friday to protest the insult.

But the police chief’s haste to jump on the bandwagon has only highlighted the Malaysian police force’s poor crime solving record and blighted reputation.

Like other families who have become victims of crime in Malaysia, the adult children of Jenkins say the police investigation into her disappearance was seriously flawed. They proved as much when they found some of her remains and personal effects in 2020 while searching the site of the housing development where her body was found. The family of Koh is still waiting to know the findings of an inquiry into his disappearance, years after he was bundled into a black SUV later identified as the property of the police special branch.

The father of murdered Mongolian translator and whistle blower Altantuuya Shaaribuu had to take civil action in Malaysia to get any justice for his daughter, who was killed by two police bodyguards of the now-jailed Najib Razak, one of whom has confessed he acted on the former prime minister’s orders.

Malaysian human rights group Suara Rakyat – founded in 1989 after 106 opposition figures and activists were detained without trial – says any police pursuit of the Singaporean comedian is a “waste of resources”. “So many crucial issues are swept under the carpet here. For resources to be wasted on an issue like this would be very foolish.”

Malaysian MP Charles Santiago, the chairman of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, warned police interference in the issue would fan the flames of outrage after apologies had been made.

“Unless they can show there was a crime of national proportions that requires her to be arrested – keeping in mind she is a foreign citizen – they should just leave it alone,” he said. “There are so many other priority cases.”