Singapore—Photos of a police report allegedly filed against Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat, who is the First Assistant Secretary-General of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), made the rounds on social media on Monday (July 6).
This came just one day after two police reports were filed against Workers’ Party (WP) candidate Raeesah Khan over comments she made online in 2018 concerning race and religion. Ms Khan has since apologised for her remarks online.
In the photo of the report filed with the Singapore Police Force (SPF) against DPM Heng, the date of filing is indicated as last Sunday, July 5, 2020, at 10:58 in the evening. The name and contact information of the person who filed the report has been redacted. The only information about the person that can be seen is that he or she is a Singaporean citizen.
The date given for the incident reported is March 29, 2019. On the section for details of the incident, the person added a link to a TODAY Online article which began with, “A segment of Singapore’s population is happy to have individuals from a minority race as their prime minister, but the older generation is not ready for that”.
The person added, “I find this comment to be socially divisive and as someone from the minority race, I feel unsafe in Singapore.”
At a forum at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) on Thursday, March 28, 2019, DPM Heng had said that older Singaporeans are not ready for a non-Chinese prime minister, which many netizens disagreed with and were unhappy about.
The Deputy Prime Minister had been asked by Assistant Professor Walid Jumblatt Abdullah of NTU’s School of Social Sciences’ public policy and global affairs programme, “Is it Singapore who is not ready for a non-Chinese prime minister, or is it the PAP (the ruling People’s Action Party) who is not ready for a non-Chinese prime minister?”
He replied, “My own experience in walking the ground, in working with different people from all walks of life, is that the views — if you go by age and by life experience — would be very different.
I do think that at the right time when enough people think that we may have a minority leader, a minority who becomes the leader of the country, that is something that we can all hope for.”
The photo of the SPF form also indicated that the identity of the person making the report had been authenticated via SingPass.
A few hours later the photo started circulating on Twitter, where it was shared by a netizen who wrote, “I guess since we are suddenly so concerned about racism, we should take turns reporting politicians who make minorities feel unsafe. Like this guy.”
I guess since we are suddenly so concerned about racism, we should take turns reporting politicians who make minorities feel unsafe. Like this guy. pic.twitter.com/S3G8Y7IHd8
— Lim Jialiang (@lim_jialiang) July 5, 2020
The website All Singapore Stuff carried a story on the police report filed against DPM Heng on Monday morning (July 6). Later that day, it carried another story featuring yet another police report, this time filed against the “known PAP” supporter who had filed the report against WP’s Raeesah Khan, a man named Abdul Malik bin Ghazali, who admitted on social media that he had been one of “the first who had leaked screenshots” of Ms Khan’s tweets.
In the report filed against Mr Malik, he is accused of having violated a number of laws under the Sedition Act. —/TISG
Heng Swee Keat gets a lot of flak over remarks about Singapore not being ready for non-Chinese PM