March 27, 2014
 
Malaysia is Copying the Failures of Aruba in the Natalee Holloway Case
 
Summary: Aruba also closed of a case in the face of bad PR, then had to reopen it because of public sentiment. Today, Americans are poised to boycott a key Malaysian industry.
 
    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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Boycoting Peace
by Fred Taub
President, Boycott Watch
 
 
 

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