Malaysia ‘less peaceful’ compared to 2012, says international report

The Bersih rally in April last year saw the police come down hard on the protestors. — File picKUALA LUMPUR, June 13 — Malaysia fell to 29th in an international index measuring peace among countries released this week, nine places below its 20th rank in the same index last year.

This comes as the Global Peace Index (GPI) released by independent research house Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) fell five per cent in the last six years, indicating that the world is less peaceful than it was back then.

Malaysia’s GPI score has increased from 1.49 in 2012 to 1.57 this year, continuing a steady trend for the last four year. Countries with lower GPI score are seen as more peaceful.

In the Asia-Pacific region, Malaysia is ranked sixth, below New Zealand, Japan, Australia, Singapore, and Taiwan.

Malaysia has relatively low scores in all three combined major factors, scoring 1.7 out of 5 in militarisation, and 1.3 in domestic and international conflict, but scored slightly higher for society and security at 2.1.

For the last five years, Malaysia has kept its 2.0 scores for “perceived criminality in society”, “security officers and police”, and “homicides”.

Malaysia’s score for likelihood of violent demonstrations was slightly higher at 3.0, but significantly lower than last year’s 3.5. Political instability also has decreased from 2.0 last year to 1.5 this year. Political terror however, has increased from 2.0 to 2.5.

Malaysia was ranked 79th in its GPI score improvement, in close company of other countries such as Burundi, Mali and Azerbaijan.

IEP estimated that violence has impacted Malaysia’s economy by around US$14.3 billion (RM45 billion) last year, which made up around three per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP).

Malaysia saw a series of rallies in the run up to its 13th general election, including Bersih rallies calling for clean, free and fair elections which saw the government cracking down on protesters.

Pakatan Rakyat (PR) also has organised several “Black 505” rallies to protest against alleged electoral fraud in Election 2013, causing several opposition and civil society figures to be detained under the Sedition Act.

A similar rally is planned at Padang Merbok here for June 22 despite the Olympic Council of Malaysia’s (OCM) insistence that it needed the field for an event the day after.