One would expect Facebook posts with xenophobic undertones to be coming from radical individuals, but it’s another thing completely when a Minister comes under fire for doing exactly that.

Minister for National Development Khaw Boon Wan posted on his Facebook page yesterday with pictures from a joint simulation exercise with the Singapore Police Force, the Singapore Civil Defence Force and ‘foreign worker ambassadors’.

As if the images weren’t already implying that government agencies are preparing their capabilities against all migrant workers (aka systemic discrimination), Khaw continues by saying that “prevention is always better than cure” when it comes to disputes and altercations occurring specifically at foreign workers’ dormitories, due to foreign workers.



“These are possible scenarios, given the concentration of foreign workers in one locality,” Khaw writes, effectively deeming them as threats to national security.

Already, netizens are up in arms over the racially insensitive simulation exercise and his post. One Facebook user feels disturbed by the racial undertones, emphasising that riots can be “started by anyone regardless of their ethnicity”, and that it goes against intentions of a harmonious society when one posits “Indian foreign workers as the next group of rioters or troublemakers”.

Others agree, pointing out that simulating exercises against a particular racial group are unnecessary, backward, and dehumanising, displaying “an embarrassing lack of sensitivity and political savvy”. The general outcry basically supports the notion that training exercises against such large-scale riots are needed, but nothing justifies using migrant workers as ‘props’.

“Do we really treat them as builders, with the full dignity of human persons, or do we merely see them as building tools — tools that can injure us if we do not wield them properly, or if we do not keep a tight grip on them?” writes one impassioned commenter.

The Minister has yet to respond.

Photo: Khaw Boon Wan Facebook page

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