BBC Correspondent Jennifer Pak writes about ethnic tensions in Malaysia:
Nasir Safar, an adviser to the prime minister, recently resigned after he reportedly said Chinese women mainly came to the country to dabble in the flesh trade.
He called the Chinese and Indians, who make up a third of the country’s population, “immigrants”. He threatened to take citizenship away from Indians if they continued to make extreme demands on the government… The Malays made up the majority, but they were consistently among the poorest group in the country.
To rebalance this, the government gave special privileges to Malays in all aspects of life; in education, housing, jobs in the public sector – a kind-of positive discrimination policy.
This is a constant source of resentment among the country’s Chinese and Indian minority… Prime Minister Najib Razak has tried to chip away at this policy, and is now in overdrive to rebuild national unity with his One Malaysia campaign that preaches religious, cultural and ethnic tolerance.
© cschultz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. |
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