What's going on, Malaysia?

I follow the recent turn of ethnic conflicts across the border in Malaysia with growing anxiety and disappointment at the powers that be. Not too long ago we had news of the minority Indian protests and arrests and now we have a widescale (uncontrolled) crackdown on foreign workers?! Quotes below from this IHT article.

Like foreign workers elsewhere, they are resented by many local people and demonized by politicians. Here in Malaysia they have become the targets of an expanding campaign of harassment, arrest, whippings, imprisonment and deportation.

To lead this campaign, the government in 2005 transformed a volunteer self-defense corps, created in the 1960s to guard against communists, into a strike force deputized to hunt down illegal immigrants. This force, called Rela, now numbers nearly half a million mostly untrained volunteers - more than the total number of Malaysia's military and police in this nation of 27 million. Its leaders are armed and have the right to enter a home or search a person on the street without a warrant. By an official count, its uniformed volunteers carry out 30 to 40 raids a night.... Rela volunteers cast a wide net as they stop and search people who look like Asian foreigners. Most migrant workers come from Indonesia, while others come from Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Vietnam as well as from Myanmar.

As it takes over more of the duties of the police and prison officials, Rela is drawing the condemnation of local and foreign human rights groups, which accuse the volunteers, some as young as 16, of violence, extortion, theft and illegal detention.

Zaidon, the director general of Rela, said his organization is expanding so fast that it is impossible to train most of the volunteers or to carry out background checks before deputizing them to make arrests.