DBS employee who posted image of torn Singapore flag accuses Singapore of being racist

Avijit Das Patnaik, the Singapore permanent resident who shared on social media an image of a Singapore flag being ripped to reveal an Indian flag has come under fire for accusing Singapore of having racist practices.

The 46-year-old who is originally from India took to LinkedIn to criticise Singapore.

In a post on Tuesday (May 19), he claimed Singapore is practicing racism by separately reporting Covid19 cases as numbers of foreigners and numbers of locals and permanent residents.

The former vice-president at DBS started his post with the hashtag ‘#RacismBeginsWithsingapore’.

Mr Patnaik said that “headlines and investigation parameters are differentiating between locals and foreigners; and reduced to robots, everyone is forced to be fine with this #xenophobia”.

He added that foreigners in Singapore are “made aware ten times a day” about their non-local status.

Sharing a photo of the police speaking to two foreigners, Mr Patnaik concluded his post saying, “Anyone thinking of moving to #TheRealsingapore, talk to me first!”.

He added the hashtags ‘#Racist’ and ‘#Xenophobic’ as well.

However, in a CNA report last year, Mr Patnaik’s words were completely different.

“I can never imagine disrespecting any country or any religion. If you look in my house, you will see Chinese decorations. You will find many Muslim things. We visit mosques. We celebrate Chinese New Year every year, including doing ‘lo hei’ within the family. That’s how we’ve brought our kids up, that you must love every nationality, every race, every religion,” he said.

In the report, Mr Patnaik even explained that the image he posted meant that he “was sort of declaring that my body is Singaporean, only my heart remains Indian”.

TISG has reached out to Mr Patnaik on LinkedIn. /TISG