Ban e-games!

The Consumers’ Association of Penang (CAP) urgently calls on the government to ban violent e-games like the Player Unknown’s Battleground (PUBG) that was emulated by the terrorists who massacred people at the mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, recently.

It is highly regrettable that the Youth and Sports Minister Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman claimed that such terror attacks should not be linked to e-games offhandedly, psychologists have asserted that there is a connection between ‘violence’ and ‘e-games’ and ‘movies’, especially when people were conditioned from young. He does not understand the impact of the violence in the game on the human mind. Studies have also shown an association between the two.

It is highly possible to de-sensitive people to blood, violence, injuries and death as we can observe how the present generation react to violent e-games and movies without flinch; in fact, they enjoyed the time spent on these media. If we abhor killings, how are we to explain about children who have been brainwashed to carry out terror attacks because they are more focused on achieving their objectives than to think about the pain or sufferings they cause?

We reiterate the call for ban on violent e-games and movies as we had done over the decades because it is not beneficial to our society but instead condition it to be inhumane, unfeeling, and violent. We do not want our people to think that blood is merely liquid flowing from the body and violence provide a cheap adrenalin rush. We want our society to feel the pain and empathy for all living creatures.

Press Statement, 18 March 2019