Malaysia Suffers Backlash After Wrongly Printing Indonesian Flag in SEA Games Booklet

Well, this is embarrassing! Apparently Malaysia has mistakenly printed the wrong flag for Indonesia in a booklet on the Kuala Lumpur SEA Games 2017 that is currently taking place.

The Indonesian flag which consists of two stripes, red on top and white below, was wrongly printed upside down (that’s actually the Polish flag instead!).

According to CNA, when Malaysian Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin realised the mistake, and he took to Twitter to apologise to a tweet that Indonesian Youth and Sports Minister Imam Nahrawi made. In his tweet, Nahrawi said, “It was a great opening ceremony for the #SEAgame2017 but our nation was insulted by one fatal mistake. Our flag is Red and White.”

Source: twitter

In reply to this, Jamaluddin apologised with, “Please accept my sincere apologies for this. There was no malice. “I very much regret that this mistake happened. My apologies.”

Other netizens who also noticed the glaring error commented on it and the hashtag #ShameOnYouMalaysia started trending on Twitter. Oh no! Nahrawi also said that they were very disappointed by the incident and would definitely protest.

Source: twitter

“We are waiting for a direct apology from the government of Malaysia. How can such a big and special event be tarnished by this?

“This is really very careless and we are very, very disappointed. This has injured us as a great nation… It should not be allowed to happen again, especially as this is a very open event, watched by millions of eyes. Of course, we regret this incident.” he added.

Another minister, Indonesian Secretary for the Youth and Sports Ministry Gatot S Dewa Broto also criticised Malaysia for the mistake and told Indonesian media that “every host country should be sensitive to symbols and symbols of the country, because there are international convention rules about it.”

Source: cna

This is the actual flag:

source: abc news

The Malaysia SEA Games Organising Committee (MASOC) has released a statement offering their sincere apologies on this matter to all Indonesians as it was an unintentional mistake. In addition, the statement said that Jamaluddin who is MASOC chairman would personally call Nahrawi on Sunday to make amends and a personal apology.

“We truly regret this error and we hope that the close ties between the two countries will be further enhanced in the spirit of the SEA Games,” the statement said.

Also read: Netizens Applaud Man’s Friendly Approach When Tourists Mistaken Mosque for Temple