New Economic Policy as institutionalised mechanism to persecute non-Muslim minorities Government policies of positive discrimination favour the Malay majority and the
Bumiputera status, particularly in areas such as housing, finance, governance and education. Economic policies designed to favour
Bumiputera, including affirmative action in public education, were implemented in the 1970s in order to defuse inter-ethnic tensions following the
May 13 Incident in 1969. However, these policies have not been fully effective in eradicating poverty among rural Bumiputeras and have further caused a backlash especially from Chinese and Indian minorities. The policies are enshrined in the
Malaysian constitution and questioning them is technically illegal.
UMNO also promotes
ketuanan Melayu, which is the idea that the ethnic Malays (Bumiputeras) should get special privileges in Malaysia. Pro-Bumiputera Malays claim that The Federation of Malaya Agreement signed on 21 January 1948 at King House by the Malay rulers and by Sir Edward Gent as the representative of the British government lets Malays be the leaders among three races. However, others have claimed that the Agreement promises equality to all three races who made up the population of Malaysia. Those were the original terms of The Federation of Malaya Agreement, which Dato' Onn Jaafar - then heading UMNO - had looked to abide by . However, in 1951 the UMNO began enshrining the rights of Malays over all other races in law. Today, Malays dominate in politics at both national and state levels, in the civil service, military and security forces. The Chinese have traditionally dominated in the economy and live in large numbers in urban areas of Malaysia. The Malay-controlled government ensures that all Bumiputeras of Malay origin are given preferential treatment regardless of merit when it comes to the number of student places in Government universities, where 90% of placements are reserved for the Bumiputera, leaving many Chinese and Indians with no choice but to turn to significantly costlier private universities. Government benefits for Malays include discounts for new houses and preferential treatment in public housing, cheaper burial plots, that all key government positions to be held by Malays including most sporting associations, a minimum of a 30% Malay Bumiputera equity to be held in listed companies, full funding for mosques and Islamic places of worship, special high earning interest trust funds for Bumiputera Malays, special share allocation for new share applications for Bumiputera Malays, and making the Malay language a compulsory examination paper. While the government has given special provisions and rights to the Malays through documented legal texts, they have also allowed certain practices by the Buddhist, Hindu and other religious minorities to be practised according to their religious beliefs, as is enshrined in Article 3 of the Federal Constitution. The lack of meritocracy in the Malaysian education system is a valid concern, and this creates even more disparity between various groups in Malaysia. In the tertiary education system, one of the options after taking the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia is the matriculation system. However, matriculation is highly limited for non-Malays, with 90 percent of the available spots going to Malays. In 1968, Prof. al-Attas, a member of the GERAKAN, engaged in a debate with Lim Kit Siang and the Opposition from the Democratic Action Party (DAP)6 on the subject of Indonesian literature being made as part of the corpus of Malay Language literature, and on the idea of a Malaysian Malaysia. Responding towards Lim Kit Siang's claim that adopting Malay as the national language is racist and chauvinistic, Prof al-Attas argued that Malays cannot be accused as racist because a Chinese who becomes a Muslim and speaks the Malay Language can be considered a Malay; a Malay, however, can never be a Chinese. By this definition, however, a Malay that renounces Islam is no longer a Malay. In 2010, a Malaysian court sentenced a Malay to just a week in jail and only fined 11 others for a brandishing a cow's head during a protest against the construction of a Hindu temple. Critics said the light sentences would further strain race relations between the majority Malay Muslims and minority Hindu Indians, Chinese as well as Christians of various races who complain of discrimination. The 12 were from a group who had marched in August 2009 with the bloodied head of a
cow, to protest a plan to build a Hindu temple in their mainly Muslim neighbourhood. Hindus, who consider the cow to be a sacred animal, were offended and angered.
Racism in the Job Environment A study by the Centre for Governance and Political Studies (Cent-GPS) made an experiment Study on 7 fictitious candidates by sending a small sample size of 7 fictitious resumes representing 7 candidates: male and female Malay, Indian and Chinese candidates, 3,829 times in total to over 500 job vacancies across the
Klang Valley. No fictitious Sabahan nor Sarawakians were involved in this study. Out of these 7 fictitious candidates, the study concluded that employers in the business sector are actively looking for Chinese candidates. The study had 3 hypothesis, first ethnic Malay applicants will be discriminated against in Malaysia's business sector compared to their non-bumiputera peers. The study found out that the fictitious Chinese candidates dominated the callbacks by a huge margin. The two male and female Chinese candidates obtained more job callbacks than their Malay and Indian counterparts combined. No details regarding whether it was a Malay management company, an Indian management company or Chinese management company were included in the study, a confound that would likely lead to a skew in the results given the racial tensions and linguistic barriers in Malaysia due to the lack of a communal lingua franca that is neutral and which does not favour any one race. The second hypothesis was
Mandarin is a key factor in helping or boosting a candidate's chance of securing a job interview. The study finds that when companies list “Mandarin required” in their advertisement, it is actually a filter to hire Chinese candidates. Their third hypothesis was the hijab plays a crucial factor in determining a candidate's successfully job application. The study found out that a Malay girl without a hijab gets more callbacks than a Malay girl who wears a hijab. The study concluded that even as candidates had the same qualifications, education and experience, the ethnicity of a candidate still plays a vital role in the success of a job application for a business graduate. Only business graduates were studied in this study, with other fields of study being suitable for an attempt for replication of this study. == Other ethnic groups ==