There was a time – Jean Yeo

This is a six part series produced by Jean and Pedro and shown on Channel 5 at 9 pm every Monday. Tonight was the first half of the 1964 racial riot in Singapore. The next half will be shown on ncxt Monday. I am not sure how many of you have seen this episode and the other episodes of early Singapore.

I was in Secondary Two then. Still a bit young to really understand what was going on but could not miss the fear and tension of those days. My memory was still vivid on that night, in a coolie keng in Borneo Road. This was a row of double storey prewar houses with 9 units attached together and an open verandah on the upper floor. One unit was occupied by a lone Malay family, two by Indians, one of which was an Indian coolie keng. The rest were Chinese families. Though only nine units, there were many Chinese families as each family occupied just one room with the exception of three units. There were several rows of shophouses along the adjacent Nelson Road. The nearest cluster of Malay residents was in a govt quarters at Miri Road about 50 metres away. It was a mixture of Malays, Indians and a few Chinese families.

I was sitting there with more than ten Chinese coolies, all male singles from China in their 40s and 50s. Remembered them looking at me, an excited little boy in their midst. They did not say anything to me. They were very calm and did not seem to want to do anything or were bothered by the news of the racial riots in Geylang. No weapons were prepared, but as coolies there were many wooden poles under the long beds if needed. There were no talks of going after the nearest Malay kampong in Radin Mas a km away.

Outside there were movements of people. The gangsters had a job cut out for them. They became the much needed guardians of the neighbourhood. Over the few days of curfew, nothing really happened in the neighbourhood. Not a single incident. The Malay family were not disturbed at all. But one could imagine their fear living in a Chinese neighbourhood.

I think this was the normal state of affairs in many areas when the non Malays were the majority. The clashes were in Malay majority areas in Kampong Glam, Geylang and Eunos areas. This could explain that the riots were likely to be incited by foreigners.

The only event that came pretty close was the death of a woman that I happened to know. I used to call on them to collect night soil removal fees, the bucket system that we provided as a side income to some of the households in kampong Radin Mas. It was weeks later that news of her killing reached us. That dreadful night her family members heard her scream just a little distance from their attap hut. It was not the right thing to be brave to rush out. They collected her body the next morning on a path leading to their home. By then we had stopped providing the service and I no longer run all over the kampong to collect the monthly fees.

The tragic event of 1964 was called a racial riot in Singapore. The non Malays clashed with the rioters and fought for their lives. And there were the presence of impartial law enforcers to keep everything in control. Though we were in Malaysia, the patrols were conducted by teams of mixed racial origins officers to ensure that every incident was evenly handled. Within the local communities there were really no bad blood or deep rooted baggages to allow the riots to be blown out of proportion.

The riots in neighbouring Malaysia and Indonesia were misnomers. They were killing the Chinese in those days, with the partial law on the side of the killers. Many Chinese were brutally killed in both countries that the Chinese media termed the events as ‘pai hua’ or killing of Chinese. They were not racial riots but highly racist mobs out to kill the Chinese.

This dark part of our history came and gone and hopefully would not be repeated again. The HDB policy of allocating flats to different ethnic groups to prevent any concentration of a particular race had its origin from this tragic past. We must not take the small discomfort and inconvenience of such policies lightly and think it is ok to remove them without taking heed to our history. What happened in 1964 was nothing compares to the events in Malaysia and Indonesia that were best not spoken. The wounds have healed but the ugly scars are still there.

It is worth watching the second part of the 1964 riots next Monday and to hear the personal encounters of the people who are still living with us. We must learn from our past, our history and our mistakes and not to let it ever be repeated. We must not be complacent to what can go wrong once again. Never take racial harmony for granted.