EIFFEL CHONG
The Place That Was Promised
"One's life is the property of God and a gift to the world, and to destroy that life is to wrongly assert dominion over what is God's and is a tragic loss of hope."
Several divers took to the polluted seaside at the fishing village searching for the body of a drowned pregnant lady. A week earlier, an expecting mother, a 39-year-old divorcée and welfare recipient, were seen walking into the sea at night.
The mother's body was retrieved after a day of non-stop diving search by the Royal Police.
On that day, her body was finally hauled out of the water, and the country notched up a peculiarly grim statistic: it was the third instance in a month of a mother killing herself and wanting her child to die along with her.
A study co-authored by the National University and the Royal University found that a deranged sense of compassion was common — parents killed their offspring to spare them from destitution and believed it their rights to do so.
"We take our children as our property," says Mr. A, former head of the country’s legislature's welfare panel.
"Asian culture dictates that they're ours, that they are not independent beings, especially when they're small."
He continues.
