Provision Against Racist Comments
Subsection 3 of the Act describes the types of publication that have seditious tendency and these includes publication that "promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes". Singapore takes social cohesion and racial harmony in the country seriously because of its multi-cultural makeup. About 40 percent of the population are foreigners, the sixth-highest percentage in the world. In 2009, 74.2% of residents were of Chinese, 13.4% of Malay, and 9.2% of Indian descent, while Eurasians and other groups form 3.2%.
Also contributing to the nation's sensitivity on racial harmony is its history of racial riots in the 1960s. More recent events of racial violence in neighboring Indonesia in the late 1990s and early 2000s also serve as reminders of potential inter-racial conflicts in the region.
Read more about this topic: Sedition Act (Singapore)
Famous quotes containing the words provision, racist and/or comments:
“Why should the generations overlap one another at all? Why cannot we be buried as eggs in neat little cells with ten or twenty thousand pounds each wrapped round us in Bank of England notes, and wake up, as the Sphinx wasp does, to find that its papa and mamma have not only left ample provision at its elbow but have been eaten by sparrows some weeks before we began to live consciously on our own accounts?”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“... contemporary black women felt they were asked to choose between a black movement that primarily served the interests of black male patriarchs and a women’s movement which primarily served the interests of racist white women.”
—bell hooks (b. c. 1955)
“My note to you I certainly did not expect to see in print; yet I have not been much shocked by the newspaper comments upon it. Those comments constitute a fair specimen of what has occurred to me through life. I have endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness, not quite free from ridicule. I am used to it.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)