SINGAPORE: A man who looked to be in his 40s harassed an interracial couple at Suntec City mall, picked a fight with them and even seemed ready to get physical.
In an anonymous post to popular confessions page, the victim wrote that he was at Suntec with his partner who was of a different race. He said that while they were walking, a guy stopped him and said that the victim’s foot had touched him as they passed by. The victim apologised and continued walking.
“He stopped me again and replied, “You better take care in the future, or I will see you”. I apologized again and minded my own business. To my surprise, instead of leaving us alone, he continued shouting at me from behind. My girlfriend went to him and said sorry it will not happen, but his only target was me”, the victim wrote.
The victim added that the man followed him and his girlfriend for nearly 200 metres inside the mall, shouting racial slurs at them.
In his post, the victim said: “For me, it was tough to make any decision as first time I faced such racial harassment in Singapore and don’t want to escalate it. Please let me know if you were a witness”. He asked if he should file a complaint with the police as he was a foreigner and was worried it would affect his job. “I strongly discourage such incident, and will be glad if it helps a bit to stop racism in Singapore”, he added.
“I always had option to move to other country but chose Singapore because of its cultural integrity and racial harmony. I have many local friends who love me and with whom I spend weekends together playing sports or enjoying dinner. Singapore always felt like a home to me, but today’s incident hit me hard”, the man wrote. Netizens who commented on his post told him not to be disheartened and explained that sometimes there were mentally unsound people. Others also urged him to make a police report of the incident.
Here’s what they said:
Earlier this month, a woman working in a customer service job took to social media ranting about how frustrated she was with racist customers.
In her post, she wrote that she grew up in Singapore but “travelled a lot during my previous job and am familiar with the different accents others use. It’s easy to spot a fellow Singaporean from the way we speak. Even if a speaker’s native language is not English but is speaking english to me, I guess most people can roughly guess what the person is trying to convey. I know I am privileged to have this exposure and experience. For each job I stay in that city for a few weeks or up to a month so I am adaptable to different environments quickly”.
She said that after travelling for about 10 years due to work, she decided to settle down and find a job on the ground which had a similar job scope where she still had to interact with mostly foreigners.