While Aruba was facing a boycott
because of the disappearance of Natallee Holloway, that nation closed the case
in hopes it would simply go away. Boycott Watch covered that boycott
extensively, including breaking the news that despite Aruba claiming tourism
hit an all-time high because of the media attention, the fact is that Aruba
tourism dropped considerably and kept dropping to the point where hotels and
casinos on the island nation had to close down because of a lack of business.
In fact, at one point people were so upset at the Van Der Sloot family for
their involvement; their family home in Aruba was vandalized.
In Aruba, Beth Holloway, the mother of Natalee, was
treated as persona non-grata, being ignored by Aruba officials to the point
where the boycott of Aruba spread out of Americans in sympathy. Now in
Malaysia, families were given little to no information, only finding out
information about the fate of their loved ones from the media. In both cases,
the governments treated the families poorly and without any regard to their
feelings, putting the needs of the government before anyone else.
That is where the similarities of Aruba and Malaysia
meet today. Malaysia appears to want to close the case of their flight MH370 to
get the case out of the news, just Aruba did the same with their bad PR case.
The result in the Aruba case was more outrage at the government insensitivity,
which is also evident in Malaysia.
Boycott Watch sees
several parallels between the two cases and believes that like Aruba, Malaysia
will only continue to hurt itself with acts of defiance and silence to the
international community. The fact is both governments have shown the world
their hubris. Boycott Watch believes that Malaysia will soon start to champion
the case for the families they have showed no regard for, as evidenced by
texting families that their loved ones are presumed dead, all in an effort to
save their tourism industry the way Aruba did.
While we don't know of any officially declared boycott Malaysia, tourism is an
essential part of the economy of both Aruba and Malaysia, and Boycott Watch has
no doubt tourism is down in Malaysia right now because that nation can't
explain why the flight disappeared, thus the fear of tourism to that Muslim
nation is not only valid, but on the minds of potential tourists. Additionally,
without any airport security information after flight MH370 went missing,
people are afraid to fly out of Malaysia. There is
not much of a tourism business from the United States to Malaysia, yet
consumers have already been inquiring about what products are made in Malaysia
which they can boycott. While Boycott Watch does not advocate any boycotts, we
predict that palm oil, a Malaysian product already under consumer scrutiny that
is also a big business in Malaysia, will soon be boycotted by Americans who
wish to stand in protest with the families of the victims of flight MH370.
Boycott Watch has written about Malaysian palm oil as targeted for a boycott,
thus building on a trend. |
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