Fb screengrab/ JB 新山吹水站2.0
2 men end up brawling at JB checkpoint after one tried to jump the queue
MALAYSIA: After a video of two men getting into a fight at the Sultan Iskandar Building CIQ Complex in Johor Bahru was posted on Facebook on Thursday (April 10), it quickly went viral, getting over 2.1 million views so far.
The clip was posted on the JB 新山吹水站2.0 page by a Facebook user named Jackson Hiew. It is nearly one and a half minutes long and shows the men, one in a green shirt and one in a yellow shirt, coming to blows amid a queue between two buses.
Some women standing in the queue immediately moved away to avoid getting hit. The two men tussle so intensely that they even hit a barrier.
At first, several bystanders merely look on, but others later come onto the scene to intervene. One man even puts his arms around the brawler in yellow to calm him down and get him to stop fighting. Others, who appeared to be officials at the checkpoint, stood around the man in green and spoke to him.
Even after the two men were separated after others stepped in, the man in yellow continued to behave aggressively. Fortunately, some officials stuck to him and followed his moves so he was prevented from coming close to the man in the green shirt. Similarly, when the man in green tried to draw near the other brawler, the others prevented him.
A report in the China Press pinpoints the cause of the fight to the man in green as having tried to cut the line waiting to board buses at the checkpoint. It also says that the man tried to get on a newly arrived bus, even though others had gotten there before him and had been waiting in line for quite some time.
The man in green had been warned by an official not to jump the line, but the man did not pay any attention to the warning. Apparently, he also tried to get into another spot on the line. His behaviour angered the man in yellow, who then started a fight with him.
Many people had been queueing for a long time, but the man tried to board the first bus that just arrived.
A staff member warned the man not to cut the queue, but he ignored them and tried cutting into the queue at another spot. As a result, he was beaten by the man wearing the yellow shirt, which led to the fight.
The New Straits Times has since reported that a police report has been filed, and an investigation into the incident has been launched.
“Initial investigations found that the incident occurred because one of the individuals involved is believed to have cut the line, thus sparking a physical altercation,” Johor Baru South police chief, Assistant Commissioner Raub Selamat said.
Anyone found guilty under Malaysian law of causing a disturbance may be sent to jail for as long as six months and be made to pay a fine of RM1,000 (S$298) or both.
Commenters on the report said that queue-cutting is quite common and added that they understood why the man in yellow had gotten upset.
One, however, offered this solution: “Please lah! It is easy to solve – just install a queue number ticketing machine as they enter the railing area and check off / tear as they board. No queue number, and they cannot board, or else they have to pay a ‘fee’ of Rm10. Win-win for all? So many instances of ‘pregnant-looking women’, ‘pretend blur,’ or ‘blatant walk outside railing’ people cutting the queue. Personnel blind?” /TISG
