Living next door to vice (Venice Hill)

The Star, Monday April 9, 2012

Living next door to vice

ONE MAN'S MEAT
By PHILIP GOLINGAI

Tales of unruly behaviour, sexual harassment and drugs abound after foreigners had ‘taken over’ a condominium complex in the Klang Valley.

THE signboard at the club house in the leafy condominium complex in Cheras, Selangor, read: “Let’s make this our home in the hills”. It flattered to deceive.

In front of the club house was a parked police pickup truck packed with riot gear. Inside the clubhouse, several policemen were on duty.

At 12.30pm, no Malaysians – except for the police and security guards – were seen at the condominium complex while a handful of Africans were shuffling about.

The joke among residents of Venice Hill Condo – consisting of eight condominium towers – was: “If you took the ‘en’ out of ‘Venice’, you would have ‘Vice Hill Condo’.”

Hub of controversy: The joy of living in Venice Hill Condo has been disturbed after an influx of foreigners.

 

On Saturday, I was in the living room of a 44-year-old Malaysian who has lived in Venice Hill Condo for 12 years. Hannah, as she wanted to be called as she feared for her safety, invited three Malaysian neighbours to relate to me their experience of living next door to Africans.

“Prior to late 2009, the African population was small; there were only pockets of them. And we really did not take notice of them,” related Pang, a 56-year-old businessman who refused to reveal his real name.

The resident of 12 years continued: “Then, there was an influx of Africans and this place was called ‘Mini Africa’ or ‘Kampung Lagos’ (former capital of Nigeria)”.

Pang estimated that about 74 out of the 1,339 condominium units were occupied by Africans. And there was an average 10 people occupying a unit.

“Our place has gone out of control. We did not know whether they were living here or not because they were treating the condominium as a hotel,” he said.

With the new foreign neighbours, came public rowdiness.

“They would drink outside the club house and when they were drunk, they would fight among themselves,” related Pang.

Hannah interjected: “It was the first time I saw a woman beating up a man.

“They would also line up – the length of two cars – their liquor bottles in the middle of the road. It was like a joke to them.”

After several cases of sexual harassment by the African men, local women and children feared going out of their home.

Almost none of the Malaysian residents, according to Hannah, patronised the swimming pool because the foreigners would “take off their trousers and shirt and swim in their underwear”.

“Some of them would rub their crotch in front of you,” she added.

Two of them, Hannah said, sexually molested her 46-year-old neighbour in the lift.

“They sandwiched her as she was about to get out of the lift and they rubbed themselves against her,” she said.

Traumatised, Hannah’s friend locked herself in her home for two weeks and refused to lodge a police report as she could not identify the assailants.

Fazli Mohammad, a 39-year-old magazine editor who has lived in Venice Hill Condo for a decade, said the foreigners would hug and kiss in public, even in front of children.

Pang interjected: “You can find local, African, Thai, Indonesian prostitutes loitering outside our condominium tower at night.”

Fazli’s most ghastly experience with the foreigners was when a man wearing boxer shorts jumped down from the fifth floor into the balcony of his fourth floor unit.

His wife and children screamed when they saw the man, who was fleeing a police drug raid, rushed into their living room.

Luckily, it was noon and Fazli had just returned home. When the man saw him, he jumped from the balcony.

“I saw him slip and fall. The police caught him and he later died,” he said.

Around December last year, the joint management committee brought in Rela to beef up security at the condominium complex.

“It was a period of peace and quiet with the Rela’s presence,” said Pang.

“Besides controlling the foreigners, the Rela members did a good job of preventing crime (car theft and burglary) and stopping a woman from committing suicide on Christ-mas Eve.”

The Rela members, Pang said, in their checks found drugs, fake US dollars and bullets in the condo.

Then on March 31, Onochie Martins Nwankwo, a 35-year-old Nigerian who allegedly tried to rape a 50-year-old woman, died after being assaulted by Rela members.

Since his death, which was followed by a standoff between the police and Africans armed with machetes, knives and iron rods, an uneasy calm has descended on “Vice Hill Condo”.

Some residents are expecting worse to come.