Singapore's growing racial intolerance

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The inherent problem in all dictatorships around the world, and Singpaore is no exception, is the unexpected consequences of unchecked govenment policies, since there is noone to question their decisions.

Remember, some decades ago, Lee Kuan Yew ordered Singaporeans not to have more than 2 children. As expected in any dictatorship, the people dutifully complied since in Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore, just as in all dictatorships, disobedience can have unpleasant consequences.

That policy was so successful that today, despite all the government urging to have more children, as the birth rate is so low that Singaporeans are literally becoming extinct, the people have forgotten how to procreate and they can longer do it, even if they try.

This is the sort of unwanted consequence that you always see in dictatorships around the world, where citizen participation in government is prohibited because the government thinks it knows best.

Take the case of the government deciding to bring in overwhelming numbers of Chinese from the Peoples Republic of China to replace the fast disappearing local population. You know today, almost every other person you see is a new immigrant from the Peoples Republic of China. As expected of any dictatorship which thinks it knows best, they simply went ahead with this plan without thinking of the consequences.

Today, we see increasing racial intolerance which is even heading into inter racial violence. It is tearing at the seams.

In today's story in the state controlled paper the Straits Times Aug 24, 2012 titled "Shanmugam: Response to anti Indian Email shows S'poreans support multiracialism", Lee Kuan Yew's ethnic Indian Law Minister remarked that he was satisfied that Singaporeans supported multiracialism because the people were against such racial insults directed against ethnic Indians by a racist on the Internet. http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking-news/singapore/story/shanmugam-response-anti-indian-email-shows-s%E2%80%99poreans-support-multiraci

This incident of racial hatred is just one of a growing number of racial attacks predominantly by recent Chinese immigrants brought into Singapore from China to populate the country, against Singapore locals of all races, Chinese Malay and Indian.

It is quite clear that in their headlong rush to implement this illogical policy of bringing in plane loads of them from China, they simply did not consider the several possible negative consequences of this policy. One, they simply did not think of the possibility that Chinese from China who had no history of living in harmony with people of other races, may not immediately be in a position to cope with a life such as this, in close proximity to other races.  

This danger of racial intolerance is magnified tenfold especially since the island is one of the second most crowded places in the world, after the Gaza strip, and any anti racial behavior has the potential to become deadly and conflagrate island wide within seconds.

In fact racial conflict and racial violence is already happening on a daily basis. You have daily reports, which do not make the news in Singapore’s state controlled press of angry Malay passengers in crowded buses calling Chinese pigs, or babi in Malay, while the Chinese in return call the Malays and Indians black and ugly.

As Singaporeans know very well, fights, some even deadly, occur daily in buses, crowded markets and between neighbors in the crowded jam packed apartment blocks where the different races have no choice built to live in close proximity to each other.

We have heard of instances where Chinese neighbors have sprayed the Malay neighbors apartments with pig's blood, pigs being unclean animals in Islam, which as caused deadly fights between them.

In most of these cases, the fault is almost entirely that of the recent Chinese arrivals from the Peoples Republic of China as they have not been brought up to understand, as local Singaporeans have, of the need to live in racial harmony, especially in a crowded city state like Singapore.

Native Singaporeans never had such racial problems since a long time, as they have understood as the history of past racial riots have shown the dangers of intolerance. But the recent Chinese arrivals from Mainland China do not have this understanding and that is where the problem lies.

As the Singapore press is state controlled and allows publication of only what they think is in the interests of the Lee Ruling Family, these incidents go unreported, but the truth is, it is a growing dangerous trend.

The racial tension is mounting and the island is a powder keg ready to explode any minute in deadly violence, and it is not sufficient merely for the Minister to say that Singaporeans support multiracialism, and expect the growing problem of racial intolerance to simply go away.

This is another incident of the untested and unchecked policies of a dictatorship gone wrong, and there is simply nothing the government can do to correct it, since you simply can't repatriate all these Chinese just like that. Unfortunately for Singaporeans, the Chinese are here to stay and so is the inevitable result of Singapore exploding in racial violence.

Just as the harebrained policy of demanding fewer children which have now created another huge irremediable problem of a population going extinct, the importation of these masses of Chinese from China will surely end in massive racial violence in Singapore.


Gopalan Nair
Attorney at Law
Fremont, California
Tel: 510 657 6107 or 510 491 4375