Racial Conflict in Malaysia

Last week’s riots in Penang that left eleven dead and several scores injured were sparked off by what Premier Tunku Abdul Rahman described as the “trivial issue of the devaluation of the old dollars”; trivial it is—to the sophisticated. But to the Malay backwoodsman it is anything but that and that the Government realised it, albeit too late, is evident from the fact that it has announced that 10 and 20 cents coins issued before July 12 would continue to be exchanged at par.