11/06/2005

paris burns for 10 days. a lesson for singapore

despite the relatively good inter racial relations here, some minorities still feel that they have been discriminated. some even painted glorious pictures about europe, uk and the usa as the paragon of how well the coloured minorities were treated. now paris burns, and tension is also mounting in birmingham. two lessons must be learnt from these racial and religious time bombs. never take them for granted. and two, never short circuited the process of racial integration. don't ever think that foreigners can easily adapt themselves to our society. don't think that nothing happens means that everything is fine. our immigration policies and foreign workers/talents policies are time bombs that are waiting to blow up into our face. the foreigners are foreigners. it will take many generations for them to feel like one of us. speeding up the process of citizenship will not work. once their strength is big enough to count, and given the right conditions, a tiny spark is all it needs to flame the whole nation. we will be like france and uk. the govt must not be too smug to think that they have full control on accepting foreigners as our citizens. some will have values that will forever segregate them from the ethos of our society. australia and many european countries will find out sooner or later that some will not want to be like them or accept their laws and customs. then small ghettos and enclaves of foreigners will developed and they would one day demand that the nation accepts them as they are and their peculiar customs and ways of life. in fact the size of foreign workers has reached a proportion that is frighteningly unmanageable should they run riot. there is no short cut to race relations. do not race to 8 millions.

2 comments:

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

possible scenario of a riot by the foreign workerss:

1. employer absconded with their salary, affecting hundreds of workers. workers in debt and unable to pay. burn down construction site and barricade themselves or riot through the streets.

2. fighting among themselves leading to a few deaths. fighting escalated into racial or inter national issues.

3. while handling a worker dispute, workers become rowdy. fighting started and police accidentally shot and killed some foreign workers.

4. holiday merrymaking in little india or orchard road led to teasing and scuffling between locals and foreign workers. injuries and death, and rioting starts.

5. collapse of construction company or employers leading to many workers stranded without jobs, without income.

we will have a crisis at hand if a few thousand foreign workers riot, loot and burn shops and cars.

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

history has a way of self renewal so that empires will never be forever empires. civilisations will rise and crumble through their own indulgence, neglect and folly.

the european civilisation has dominated the earth for 300 to 400 years. when they first conquered the world, all coloured people were viewed with disdain, as fodders and slaves or semi slaves, or as coolies. the world belonged to the europeans and it was a norm to discriminate against the coloured people.

then the europeans got soft, pricked by conscience and a pride to introduce goodness to the world and to uplift the coloured people or to give them a chance for a better life.

coloured people were allowed access to their homeland, with some resistance initially, but eventually broke down. now the coloured people have formed a substantial group in their backyards and are demanding to be treated fairly and be given the good life.

after years of championing the rights of individuals, coloured included, the whites have found themselves locked in a position that they could not unwind without making themselves looking ridiculous. they have to live with the demands of the coloured people and allowed their societies to be messed up, and levelled down. and with their low reproduction rate, they might even be wiped out in their homeland, one day.