SG man gets told by colleague: ‘Why are you here? You don’t belong… get out of this country’

SINGAPORE: A local Reddit user took to the platform to write about how one of his workmates told him to leave Singapore even though he is a Singaporean.

U/raishuu_no_hero wrote in a post on r/askSingapore on Thursday (Dec 12) that he “belongs to the ‘others’ category under the so-called CMIO system”, meaning he is neither Chinese nor Malay nor of Indian descent.

However, he is a Singaporean who has gone through K1 to O-Levels and two years of National Service.

It is because he’s under the “Others” category that he believes someone in his company told him, “Why are you here? You don’t belong here. Kindly get out of this country.”

He added in edits to his post that he had done nothing to provoke the discriminatory remark. He claimed to be minding his own business when a colleague came up to him and started berating him in Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Bahasa Melayu, and Tamil.

The post author said that he understood what his colleague said as he knows a few words in these languages. He was uncertain  whether the colleague was showing off — at his expense — how fluent he is in several tongues.

“Either way, they were hurtful,” he added.

In answer to commenters’ questions about why he didn’t retaliate, the post author wrote that based on his past experiences, this goes badly for him and he might even get blamed for having a victim mindset.

This is one of the reasons why he has always kept a very low profile and feels insecure about his background, even though Singapore is the only home he knows.

“But eh, what is society if there is at least not one person who hates you down to the core for whatever reason, I guess?” he wrote cynically.

There were many sympathetic Reddit users commenting on his post. Some of them encouraged him to report the incident to HR. Others, however, cautioned him to collect evidence first, as it is possible that the post author is neither the first nor the last victim of discrimination in their company.

Some of the commenters expressed outrage on his behalf, calling the remarks disgusting and saying that this type of incident should not be tolerated. /TISG

Read also: 30yo woman from minority group asks, “How can I handle discrimination?”