Malaysia: Year In Review 2006Article Free Pass
Long considered a model of ethnic and religious tolerance, Malaysia showed signs in 2006 that its carefully maintained social fabric was beginning to fray as tensions mounted between conservative Muslims and their non-Muslim countrymen. In March, Marina Mahathir, a newspaper columnist and the daughter of former prime minister Mahathir bin Mohamad, touched off a fiery controversy when she likened the situation of Muslim women in Malaysia to that of South African blacks under apartheid. Malaysian media’s reportage and discussion of religious issues was later censured by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who described such issues as “too sensitive” for debate. In April a crowd of Muslims destroyed a 19th-century Hindu temple in Kuala Lumpur after the courts determined that the building had been built illegally, though it—and other non-Muslim houses of worship threatened with destruction—predated the keeping of land records in Malaysia. Some local governments enacted bans on couples’ kissing and holding hands in public and on owning dogs (considered unclean by conservative Muslims). A coalition of nongovernmental groups known as Article 11 called on the government to enforce constitutional guarantees of religious equality and freedom of worship against creeping Islamization, but the prime minister instead accused Article 11 of endangering Malaysia’s social harmony by focusing attention on sensitive issues. Critics warned that the government’s weak response to the encroachments of Islamic fundamentalism might lead to the further erosion of religious freedom and interethnic harmony in Malaysia.
In September Prime Minister Badawi opened the manufacturing facility of Inno Biologics, a new government-owned drug and biotechnology company, and announced the creation of a $200 million fund to support biotech initiatives in agriculture, medicine, and industry. With the fund and the launch of a new technology park near the capital, Malaysia sought to establish itself as a major hub in the burgeoning biotech industry and to reinvigorate its drive to achieve full socioeconomic development by 2020, a goal first articulated by then prime minister Mahathir in 1991. The country’s economy continued its robust expansion, with exports to China and the United States reaching record levels, and a strong growth rate of 5.5% was forecast for the year.
Malaysia remained one of the most cost-effective destinations for foreign companies in 2006. U.S.-based Dell and Intel expanded their operations in Penang, and in September the German chipmaker Infineon Technologies opened a state-of-the-art power semiconductor factory in nearby Kedah. Singapore-based electronics manufacturer Flextronics began construction of a factory in the southern port of Tanjung Pelapas.
After fighting broke out between Israeli and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon in mid-July, Prime Minister Badawi condemned the international community’s “paralysis” in dealing with the crisis. Badawi later sent 360 troops to join the international peacekeeping force in Lebanon. Malaysia’s perennially thorny relations with neighbouring Singapore continued during negotiations to replace a causeway joining the two countries. Although Singapore opposed the project, in January Malaysia began work to raise its side of the causeway, which would have resulted in a crooked roadway. The project and all related negotiations were abandoned in April, however.
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