This year Singaporeans, or some Singaporeans, are blindly celebrating the Bicentennial, to remember 200 years after this island was colonised and taken over by a foreign power, the British Empire. Do Singaporeans understand the significance of being colonised and becoming the subjects of an Empire? When you are colonised, your country went with it, including your rights as a person, no more human rights. You are subjects, not citizens of a country, with lesser rights, no voting rights. Everything in the country, including you belong to the Empire.
Are we supposed to celebrate this occasion with ommphs and revelry, with pride and joy, hallelujah, God Save the Queen? Our history books, written by the British and the western historians distorted this part of our history as something normal, something glorious. It was glorious to the Brits and the British Empire. It was not glorious for being subjugated and ruled by foreigners, for them to take over our country and everything in it.
Our historians should rewrite this part of our history, we read it as history but actually fake news, manipulated to white wash how they stole our land and our wealth and our rights and dignity as independent people of our own island. Our fore fathers were here for centuries, living a peaceful life until the Brits came. And they unashamingly proclaimed that they founded this island, Stamford Raffles founded this island for the King of England. The residents in the island did not count. Fake news? Manipulated news?
Our history should read, in 1819, a hoard of European pirates let by a man called Stamford Raffles, landed along the Singapore River. The residents welcomed them as guests and invited them to trade with us, even to stay. Within days, the intruders forced the local rulers to sign a document, written in English, which the rulers did not understand, to give away the islands to them, under the guise of some goodies, and the protection of the British Empire, like the gangsters collecting protection money to protect from their harassment. The rulers did not have any choice as the intruders were armed with guns and cannons.
The intruders then went on to become the rulers of this island, putting the local rulers aside as passive audience, puppets without any power, and without knowing that the intruders had robbed them of their land. And the intruders ruled the island until 1963 when Singapore was returned to be a part of Malaysia.
During the rule of the British intruders/pirates, the people lost all their rights to everything in the island. The Brits did whatever they wanted with the island, formed their army and police to rule over the people. They were the white lords.
This was how the British distorted our history, manipulated the narrative like it was an innocent and acceptable thing to colonise and rule the people, our forefathers, as their subjects and owning them and the island.
So, is it not true that the Bicentennial celebration is a celebration of fake news and manipulation of our history? Would POFMA be activated to denounce the fake history that we have been brought up with? Would our historians and politicians get it right this time, that colonialists and colonial masters were bad people? They did not deserve any honour! Only the beneficiaries of their crimes would honour them. They robbed, they killed, they bullied and they turned everyone into their slaves, their possessions, called subjects. Why are we glorifying them like white gods? Have we grown up and grown out of our colonial subject mentality?
What do you think? Stupidity has no cure?
We don't have to accept western history as our history. We are an independent country, no longer a colony of the British Empire.