Meeting Malaysia's Triads

Prostitution is easier to get away with, and so is loan sharking or making and peddling fake goods. Malaysia is thought to be the world's largest producer of pirated optical discs. But Ah Hing runs girls and sells pills. The women cost the gangs between $750 and $2000 each. They are bought and sold like cattle, and the pimps want a return. "The girls know they have to work to pay back the money we paid to buy them," Ah Hing said. "We do find girls who refuse to work, and we will keep them in solitary confinement and give them a bad time until they tell me they want to work," he said.

The triads have their roots in a 17th Century movement dedicated to restoring China's Ming dynasty to the throne, but over time they degenerated into criminal gangs. In some places they still have rituals, as Jessica Lau, a well-connected member of the Malaysian Chinese community, found out. When Ms Lau lived in New Zealand, her neighbour was a Hong Kong triad boss who decided to retire. "During his very last days as the leader of the triad society, he gathered everybody from his society and in front of leaders from other societies he washed his hands in a gold basin which symbolised that from today onwards he is not going to be involved in the triad society any more, and now he is old and respectable and a free man," she said.

Adapted from BBC news, Article by Jonathan Kent, September 2005

chinese translation | japanese translation | korean translation