Operation Lalang
History of Malaysia
Operation Lalang (Malay: Operasi Lalang, also called Ops Lalang; lalang is Malay for cogon grass and this was taken to mean "Operation Weeding") was a major crackdown undertaken by the Royal Malaysian Police from 27 October to 20 November 1987, ostensibly to prevent the occurrence of race riots in Malaysia. The operation saw the arrest of 106 to 119 people—political activists, opposition politicians, intellectuals, students, artists, scientists and others—who were detained without trial under the Internal Security Act (ISA). It was the second largest mass arrest in Malaysian history involving the ISA since the 13 May riots 18 years earlier. It also involved the revoking of the publishing licenses of two dailies, The Star and the Sin Chew Jit Poh and two weeklies, The Sunday Star and Watan.
The Malaysian government argued that racial tensions had reached a dangerous level within the country, forcing the government to arrest those responsible for stoking the tensions. The notion that race riots were imminent however is contested, and it is widely believed that the operation was designed to control the political opponents of the Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. The event, which was followed by the 1988 Malaysian constitutional crisis the following year, marked the beginning of a period of Mahathir's authoritarian rule.
Causes
A number of political developments and issues preceding the operation had caused mounting political and racial tensions in the country. According to the Malaysian government's white paper explaining the arrests, various groups had exploited the government's "liberal" and "tolerant" attitude and played up "sensitive issues", thereby creating racial tension in the country. This racial tension, the government said, forced the government to act "swiftly and firmly" to contain the situation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Operation Lalang” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.