<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%"><TBODY><TR>Aug 19, 2009
NATIONAL DAY RALLY
</TR><!-- headline one : start --><TR>Reveal stats on racial, religious disputes
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><!-- show image if available --></TBODY></TABLE>
<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->PRIME Minister Lee Hsien Loong's speech on Sunday highlighted the Government's challenge in maintaining racial and religious harmony.
His reference to the saga involving the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware), showed that while the Government is keen to sensitise Singaporeans to the potential social fault lines of ethnicity and spirituality, it is also wary of the amplification of such discussions.
Hence, the Government has kept disputes and debates out of public sight as far as possible, and statistics on racial and religious issues are rarely revealed.
The absence of such data has inevitably made more mature and informed discussions on the role of religion and race in the country harder. Without the necessary data, government efforts to encourage mature debate may be considered as just nagging.
What is needed now is actually a more quantifiable framework to help Singaporeans assess the state of social harmony in the country - one that is able to detect undercurrent trends rather than occasionally spotlight individuals and events.
Britain, for example, has statistics on race or 'hate crimes' and related complaints. In Singapore, these, unfortunately, are subsumed under general and often de-racialised criminal and community dispute statistics.
Statistics on race- or religion-based disputes - be it about noise, dog hair or aggressive proselytising and offensive literature - should be made publicly available in annual official reports to let Singaporeans know the severity of the matters at stake.
Rather than inflaming passions and emotions, as the Government assumes that it will, such data would actually have a reverse positive effect in not just dispelling popular misconceptions, but also getting those concerned to be more reflective and sensitive to the larger society.
Liew Kai Khiun�
NATIONAL DAY RALLY
</TR><!-- headline one : start --><TR>Reveal stats on racial, religious disputes
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><!-- show image if available --></TBODY></TABLE>
<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->PRIME Minister Lee Hsien Loong's speech on Sunday highlighted the Government's challenge in maintaining racial and religious harmony.
His reference to the saga involving the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware), showed that while the Government is keen to sensitise Singaporeans to the potential social fault lines of ethnicity and spirituality, it is also wary of the amplification of such discussions.
Hence, the Government has kept disputes and debates out of public sight as far as possible, and statistics on racial and religious issues are rarely revealed.
The absence of such data has inevitably made more mature and informed discussions on the role of religion and race in the country harder. Without the necessary data, government efforts to encourage mature debate may be considered as just nagging.
What is needed now is actually a more quantifiable framework to help Singaporeans assess the state of social harmony in the country - one that is able to detect undercurrent trends rather than occasionally spotlight individuals and events.
Britain, for example, has statistics on race or 'hate crimes' and related complaints. In Singapore, these, unfortunately, are subsumed under general and often de-racialised criminal and community dispute statistics.
Statistics on race- or religion-based disputes - be it about noise, dog hair or aggressive proselytising and offensive literature - should be made publicly available in annual official reports to let Singaporeans know the severity of the matters at stake.
Rather than inflaming passions and emotions, as the Government assumes that it will, such data would actually have a reverse positive effect in not just dispelling popular misconceptions, but also getting those concerned to be more reflective and sensitive to the larger society.
Liew Kai Khiun�
