Singapore—Madam Ho Ching, the wife of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and chief executive officer of Temasek Holdings, is a prolific poster over Facebook.

One of her many posts on Tuesday morning (May 18) caught the eye of some netizens who are asking her to take it down.

The post in question is an altered photo of an Asian beauty pageant contestant in a light blue gown and wearing a sash that reads “China”.

May be an image of 1 person, standing and sitting

It may or may not be Ms Jiaxin Sun, China’s contender for the Miss Universe pageant held in Florida last weekend.

However, the woman’s dress had been altered so that the design looked like a cluster of Covid-19 molecules—round balls studded with spikes.

This could be read as a reference to the discovery of Covid-19 in Wuhan, China.

Mdm Ho captioned the shared post with a puzzled “Huh?”

The post can no longer be viewed, as the original poster, a netizen from the Philippines, either deleted it or changed its privacy settings.

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But some netizens expressed their unhappiness with the post.

One wrote, “Utterly insensitive when people have lost loved ones and medical staff have lost their lives while trying to save others.”

Another commenter asked Mdm Ho to take it down

“Mdm Ho, with all due respect – Come on! This is not funny…. Pls delete this photo. It’s a badly edited photo, surely the Chinese are not that insensitive to make their Ms China wear such an atrocious outfit at a time as this?!

It is exactly this sort of dumb photos and messages that ignite feelings of anger and hate that fans the racism that is going around..

Pls REMOVE and do NOT circulate senseless posts like these. Thank you!”

Other commenters made it clear that they were calling out the original poster, and not Mdm Ho, as the picture had been “So inappropriate and so insensitive.”

Others referred to the spate of anti-Asian crime, especially in the United States, where Asians have been blamed for the spread of the virus.

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/TISG