Reaching a new despicable low, Singapore Home Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam took the opportunity of the recent London’s terrorist attack to promote his PAP government as “contrast”. Law Minister K Shanmugam openly blamed freedom of speech as the sole cause leading to the terrorist attack on Saturday that saw seven dead and over 20 injured in London.
The PAP Minister praised his government’s ban on freedom of speech that kept the small island state safe in contrast to UK:
“The local brand of activist state intervention, comprising policy measures to cultivate integration, coupled with the legal framework, and acceptance from citizens, keeps extremist teaching at bay and allows Singaporeans to be tolerant. In contrast, Britain has long allowed extremist preachers to poison the minds of Muslims as part of freedom of speech.”
However, Singapore’s land mass is only 719 km², or 2,377 times smaller than the United Kingdom. Singapore’s population at 5.6 million is also less than a-tenth of UK’s population. Law enforcement henceforth is a lot easier in the landlocked country.
Publishing half-truth and opportunistically using others’ misfortunes has always been a key propaganda technique of the Singapore government.
Minister K Shanmugam then further praised himself for “nipping the problem in the bud”:
“How do you stop someone who takes a car or van and drives along the public road and drives onto the pavement or takes a knife along? This applied equally to Singapore. So you got to make sure the conditions that create such ideas are nipped in the bud … that’s what we’ve been doing. Laws allowing the authorities here to step in much earlier than in other countries are insufficient.”
Other racial discrimination practices in Singapore were also praised:
“We have other forms of intervention: The ethnic integration policy in housing estates, which prevents the formation of enclaves and ghettos, as well as the availability of fair economic opportunities. Over the last 50 years, active state intervention and schools and other social policies have created an environment — an intellectual environment as well as a social environment — where our people believe these to be the right approach and believe in multiculturalism and a multiracial, multi-religious society.”