Girl claims man says about Malays, “At the end of the day, they are all just slaves working under us.”

Singapore — The experience of a 17-year-old girl was posted anonymously on the @sgfollowsall Instagram account on Sunday (June 17), which she called her first real encounter with racial discrimination.

She wrote about it in order to “spread awareness,” and posted a video of the incident.

The teen had been riding on the bus recently when she saw the older man across from her, who kept on looking at her.  And then he moved seats so that he was behind her.

She had been taking a photo of a building, which seemed to annoy the man, and he began speaking to someone on his mobile phone disparagingly about her.

“His mask was pulled down and he begin (sic) to talk on the phone really loudly and apparently he was really pissed at the fact that I was taking pictures, which FYI it was just that one photo I took,” she wrote.

She added that she could remember the exact words he said, some of which can be heard on the video.

“Towards the end of the video you could actually hear him say ‘mind your own business lah…. don’t offend people why want to take photos of this kind of thing,’” wrote the teen.

She claimed that he also said the following:

“I don’t understand why must take photos it’s so stupid and on top of that it’s a f**king women you know”.

All these Malaysians come to Singapore think they so big but who TF do they think they are.

At the end of the day, they are all just slaves working under us.

Especially all this Malay girls ah don’t know how to cover up properly don’t know how to go around with respect.”

The young woman clarified that she has been living in Singapore all her life, as have previous generations of her family. Moreover, she’s actually Indian, and could not understand why he was assuming he knew her ethnicity.

She was angered by the man’s words not only because he disparaged Malays but also because of his sexist remarks.

“As if being a women means I can’t take photos?,” and added, “Instead of telling me he goes on to talk really loud on the phone.”

And while she was tempted to “say something in the heat of the moment” she chose not to in order to avoid things escalating further. Furthermore, she did not want to give the man “the satisfaction” that she knew he was talking about her.

The teen alighted at the next stop, but before she got down, she said the man pointed his middle finger at her.

“All my years of living in Singapore I have never once felt like an outsider nor have I been racially discriminated this badly (other than of course a few name-calling in primary school which I could take) but I’ve always had many Chinese and Malay friends who made me feel part of their family and I was so thankful to be part of this community.”

The incident left the young woman in tears for the rest of the way home. 

She wrote that she had “never felt so alone or vulnerable in the place that I grew up in,” and added that she did not know what made her “a grown man’s target for him to think that he could just destroy someone like that.”

/TISG

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