On October 22, 2013 at Singapore's Woodlands bus interchange, after some sort of an argument, a Singapore Malay man spat at the faces of 2 Singaporean ethnic Chinese women. After a video of the spitting incident appeared on the Internet and going viral, the suspect was promptly arrested and now in court. Please see state owned news agency Straits Times report of Dec 28, 2013. The video can be seen here. http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking-news/singapore/story/man-admits-spitting-bus-interchange-claims-it-was-only-once-20131228
Juraimi Kamaludin, 48, accused for spitting on a woman face at Woodland
The report carefully omits to mention the ethnicity of the accused and that of the victims, an official practice in such cases not to stir the flames of inter racial hatred.
This sort of thing is especially incendiary in the multi racial island where it is no secret that the average Malay who are all Muslims hold a deep seated hatred against the Chinese for taking their island and denying them jobs, a sentiment which has on several occasions manifested in a deadly way with island wide riots of Chinese and Malays leaving several dead. The present government, despite their protestations of innocence, is not helping to assuage either side by their determined and established policy of racial discrimination.
This sort of thing is especially incendiary in the multi racial island where it is no secret that the average Malay who are all Muslims hold a deep seated hatred against the Chinese for taking their island and denying them jobs, a sentiment which has on several occasions manifested in a deadly way with island wide riots of Chinese and Malays leaving several dead. The present government, despite their protestations of innocence, is not helping to assuage either side by their determined and established policy of racial discrimination.
But despite this precaution taken by the Singaporean authorities, the jam packed overcrowded island with a majority ethnic Chinese and small but significant Malay presence means that it is inevitable that racial violence may erupt.
There is no hiding the fact that the average Malay in Singapore is disaffected. Since the early days when they were the original inhabitants, the British and subsequently the Lee Kuan Yew ethnic Chinese government deliberately began increasing the Chinese proportion of the island leaving the Malays whose island it originally was, not only marginalized in numbers but also economically leaving them as bus boys for affluent Chinese. Surely this would cause resentment and it has.
It is indeed a surprise that for so long the Malays have kept quiet and accepted this discrimination against them in their own country. I am sure that this Malay suspect was motivated to spit at the Chinese women not only because of the misunderstanding at the bus stop, it was undoubetedly occasioned by the discrimination he continues to endure in his own island. I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that had the women in question been Malays, or even Indians, he would never have done that.
Although one cannot excuse such a disgraceful act regardless of who it was, at the same time one can understand the reasons for such acts as these as attributable to the years and years of blatant racial discrimination suffered by the Malays in the land of their birth as the original inhabitants of the island; a claim which they have far and above any Chinese or Indian who ever step foot there.
We cannot say when but it may be that Malays or Chinese who may want to rock the boat take advantage of incidents like this, and perhaps even with support from Malaysia or Indonesia, majority Muslim countries who feel eked by the blatant racial discrimination practiced against their kin, may decide it time to stoke the fire a little and create a little riot, like the one we saw on December 8, 2013 in Little India Singapore.
It is very easily accomplished.
Gopalan Nair
Attorney at Law
A Singaporean in Exile
Fremont, California USA
Tel: 510 491 8525
Email: nair.gopalan@yahoo.com
8 comments:
There continues blatant discrimination in every aspect against Malays and Indians. If you can't see it you are smoking something
Hi Gopalan;
I definitely agree with you. I am a Malay from Singapore now emigrated to Canada. I was discriminated with jobs even with 3 degrees, so I decided to get out of that oppressing and discriminatory country. I feel sad to leave.
At the same time, I do not agree to what the accused have done. Spitting only shows that he have resorted to ways confronting the symptom and not be creative enough to consider emigration and start his life afresh somewhere else.
The Chinese now cry foul because they are discriminated by the foreign trash, but yet feign ignorance when they were discriminating the Malays before these foreign trash came. The net effect though is that we Malays are now third class citizens (actually, classless).
Everyday, I encourage my Malay brethren to consider emigration, to whichever English speaking country that makes them happy. Not only because of the oppression and discrimination, but also from an insidious calamity is coming to Singapore which the PAP govt is suppressing. I am talking about the rising tides from Global Warming. It was published here in Canada that studies have shown that Singapore will progressively get worse as from 2028. It is already happening now with constant flooding.
And as we approach increasing rising tides everywhere, countries will also progressively increase barriers for emigrants to enter. I tell my Malay brethren to act now and leave Singapore to the Chinese. Soon if they too want to emigrate, there is still Africa to go to for them.
Singapore-Chinese racism starts at the top with LKY who has said some vile things about Malays, the original natives of Singapore.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Malay_sentiment
(Politicians in Thailand may have Thai names, but they are really Hakka Chinese like LKY.)
More racist wisdom from Lee Kuan Yew:
‘The numerical superiority of the Chinese must be maintained’, he said, ‘or there will be a shift in the economy, both the economic performance and the political backdrop which makes that performance possible.’
- The next statement is a gem:
Lee assured the Malays that they need not fear Hong Kong immigrants taking their jobs because the immigrants would all be high income earners.
Read this and tell me if LKY is not the Hitler of SE Asia
Lee Kuan Yew: Race, Culture and Genes - United Nations Public
http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/APCITY/UNPAN004070.pdf
This is the Chinese school that LKY sent his two sons to. Don't be fooled by the name Catholic High - it is full of Chinese and no Malays.
You can understand why his son discriminates against the Malays.
http://www.catholichigh.moe.edu.sg/CHSWeb/
Nowadays, working-class native Chinese Singaporeans are not much less disaffected. The new-age discrimination is between the "have-a-lots" and the "have-nots" that the govmen economic projects have implicitly implemented. It is a big battle for them to keep on maintaining the buffer of social balance ie. the "affluent middle-class", especially when private property, cars, medical costs, and costs of education soar to the heights of First-World standards, and beyond . . . . .
I would politely disagree. I have real Malay friends who migrated from Malaysia (I'm Malaysian of Chinese descent) and are in fact doing well in the private corporate world in Singapore. I know a particular friend, a scholar and smart guy who was dismayed by how things worked in Malaysia that he packed up his things, went over to Singapore and never looked back since moving 5 years ago.
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