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Tolerance, Acceptance and Appreciation Key in Fight against Extremism: Shanmugam
Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam. | PHOTO: Robin Choo
July 31st, 2016 | 09:57 AM | 1495 views
SINGAPORE
Commenting on the spate of terrorist attacks in France over the past 18 months, Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam said that Singapore has taken a different social approach, in recognising the different ethnic identities and taking steps to integrate socially and in living spaces.
In France, “everyone is a French man”, and people are not identified by their different ethnic identities, he noted, while speaking to reporters on Friday (July 29) on the latest round of detentions and orders under the Internal Security Act for terror-related activities.
“Our philosophy is look, we look different. We are Singaporean, we are trying to form a Singaporean identity, we are somewhat succeeding. But at the same time, our ethnic differences haven’t gone away, are not going to go away anytime soon,” said Mr Shanmugam. “Let’s recognise them, then let’s see how we work on them to achieve our higher ideal.”
On Friday, the MHA revealed that two more Singaporeans have been detained under the ISA, and another two issued with Restriction Orders to prevent them from being radicalised further.
Mr Shanmugam noted that with “powerful” currents sweeping across the world, Singapore will be facing challenging times. Singapore has to “say a big no” to extremism and teachings that lean towards extremism, before the ground turns “fertile for extremist teachings to be absorbed, then for terrorism”, he said.
France has been besieged by a string of deadly jihadist attacks, including a truck attack on July 14 in Nice that claimed 84 lives, followed by an attack at a French church on July 26, in which two attackers slit the throat of 86-year-old priest. Last year, it was hit by two attacks — one that killed 130 across various sites in Paris in November, and a gun assault on the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and an attack on a kosher grocery store that killed 17 people.
Mr Shanmugam said Singapore does some things different from France, which has so far worked well. Singapore has not allowed the formation of ethnic enclaves, and people live in mixed communities as part of the ethnic integration policy, while minority representation in Parliament is also ensured, he noted.
Singapore would also not allow religious satire to be published, or burning of the Quran, as is the case in the United States under the framework of freedom of speech, Mr Shanmugam pointed out.
“Minorities must not feel shut out unfairly. Meritocracy is important.They must not feel there are other factors at play that keep them out,” he added.
He said: “I think we have to build tolerance and beyond tolerance, acceptance, appreciation for each other. And we have to build these strong bonds across religious and racial lines. And we have been trying to work on that for decades, community engagement, religious leaders coming together, communities coming together.”
Source:
courtesy of TODAY
by Tan Weizhen
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