Recently, Malaysia came under fire when it was discovered that the Indonesian flag was printed upside down in an official guidebook for the 2017 Southeast Asian Games in Kuala Lumpur.
The flag was printed upside down with the white stripe on top and the red stripe at the bottom, resembling the Polish flag instead of the Indonesian flag.
Source: CNA
Understandably upset and insulted by this, Indonesians called out Malaysia for their disrespectful mistake, and even made the hashtag #ShameOnYouMalaysia trending on Twitter.
Now, the situation has escalated even further because a group of Indonesian hackers recently infiltrated a number of Malaysian websites in light of this controversy.
According to BBC News, at least 27 websites, most of them for private businesses, were hacked, causing the homepages to display pictures of the misprinted flag along with the words “my national flag is not a toy!” written in the Indonesian flag’s colours.
Source: BBC News
Currently, the websites affected have been taken offline.
Since the controversy came to light, Malaysia’s and Indonesia’s Youth and Sports Ministers have both met so an official apology could be delivered to Indonesia.
Source: Twitter
We hope Indonesia can forgive us for this unfortunate mistake. We understand how disrespected they must have felt. Let’s hope we can put this behind us so we can continue on with the SEA Games in the right spirit!
Also read: Malaysia Suffers Backlash After Wrongly Printing Indonesian Flag in SEA Games Booklet
