Opening Address by Mr Wong Kan Seng, DPM and Minister for Home Affairs at the National Seminar 2007
24 March 2007
OPENING ADDRESS BY MR WONG KAN SENG, DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER AND MINISTER FOR HOME AFFAIRS, AT THE NATIONAL SEMINAR ON THE COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT PROGRAMME 2007 ON SATURDAY, 24 MARCH 2007, AT THE SUNTEC SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION & EXHIBITION CENTRE BALLROOM 1 & 2, AT 9.30 AM
CEP Community Leaders
Colleagues,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good morning. It has been a year since the Community Engagement Programme or CEP was launched by the Prime Minister last February. Today at this National Seminar, it is an opportune time for us to take stock of our progress and share ideas on moving forward.
Social and Psychological Resilience
2 Our society enjoys communal harmony for a long time. We respect each other’s faiths, beliefs and practices. Recent surveys testify to this comfortable state of affairs.
3 However, as pointed out by many of you who took part in the CEP Workshop in January last year, this quality of relations is not something static or permanent. Many of you pointed out the importance of constantly nurturing good relations. Many of you raised in particular, the need to teach our young to value social and communal peace and learn how it is a shared responsibility of every citizen to preserve and sustain it.
4 During the year, there were many instances when our ethnic relations were tested by events outside Singapore. Incidents such as the Danish cartoon episode in late 2005, the furore over the Pope’s speech in September 2006, and communal riots in Bangalore in January this year show us how foreign incidents can stir up the emotions and religious sentiments of people beyond their shores. Extremist rhetoric and sensitive political developments around the world can have a bearing on our people over time.
5 On the whole, Singaporeans of all races and religions behaved responsibly and acted always with restraint, ensuring that the conflicts outside us are not imported into our society to trigger insensitive emotional actions. Such reckless actions only undermine our social accord and this in turn will only hurt ourselves. This is not to say that our ethnic communities should isolate themselves from what happens outside Singapore. It is only natural that we feel empathy for others elsewhere in distress, all the more when they are of the same religious faith or race. But we must not cross the line.
6 And the line is simple – our priority is to our own society and the safety and security of Singaporeans, regardless of their race or religion. We may offer aid and comfort to the victims of violence. We could do so openly and through responsible channels so that our efforts will not be subverted. We must not cross the line to support radical organisations preaching religious hatred of others or participate in terrorist acts of violence against others.
7 This is not the first time we have articulated this. But it bears repeating today because as I mentioned in Parliament recently, the new phenomenon threatening the world is that of self-radicalised, self-inducted home-grown terrorists.
8 These are impressionable persons who in the course of their exposure to radical rhetoric typically through the Internet, become enamoured with terrorist ideology. They are not unintelligent people but they are misguided to feel a connection with the political cause espoused by such radicals as it is dressed in religious garb. Their emotions are stoked by stories of atrocities against others of the community. They feel obliged to do something about this and they are urged to fight and kill oppressors to defend the religion and its global community. Our Muslim religious leaders have responded robustly to such distortions and have moved to counter the influence of such radical sources.
Network of Trust and Vigilance
9 The CEP should help us establish a network of trust and vigilance in our society against such a threat. The Government cannot do this by itself. When persons across all our society – from schools, to grassroots, to community and religious groups, to the work-place, to the national media and so on – are sensitised and vigilant against such a threat, we develop the reflexes to spot trouble signs, and ensure that we nip trouble in the bud whenever possible.
10 This is critical especially when an incident HAS occurred. Tensions will be high as people are traumatised and anxious. In such a situation, people are susceptible to rumours and to stereo-typing which can spur irresponsible knee-jerk reactions. When 9-11 happened, many anti-Muslim reactions on the ground in the US were mindless but real – even Sikhs suffered because some Americans thought wearing a turban was synonymous with being a Muslim. We must never allow such a thing to happen here. But to do this, we must first recognise that it CAN happen. Therefore, we need to be PREPARED and mobilise our people to be watchful and prevent trouble-makers or reckless behaviour on the ground from provoking a wider reaction.
11 We have been putting in place a broad framework which will facilitate efforts by our people to come together to help strengthen our social fabric today and to manage and minimise any communal tension after any incident or crisis if such should happen in the future. Again taking the feedback we received at the CEP Workshop last year, we agree that the CEP needs to be a ground-up effort with the Government facilitating it. Since then, it is encouraging to see that many different groups have responded to the CEP initiative.
Weaving in a CEP Dimension
12 Some of you have also approached us about weaving a CEP dimension into your Emergency Preparedness Day exercises that are jointly organised by the grassroots organisations and SCDF. What this means is to develop a psycho-social dimension and a communal tension awareness dimension into the exercise. In fact, we did this at the Changi Village Integrated Contingency Plan exercise last November under the Home Team Eastern Sector. The organisers involved not only the grassroots leaders but also religious and business leaders in the locality to look at handling crisis in a deeper and broader manner. Preparations included provision of counsellors and befrienders to handle the traumatised and to help recovery from the crisis.
13 In planning an emergency exercise, the organisers should also consider how to address potential fallout in terms of communal relations. This is what I meant by the communal tension dimension. For instance, they should watch out for signs of tensions and report ground misconceptions which undermine racial or religious relations and to report it expeditiously. We encourage you to consider weaving these CEP dimensions into your exercises. The Home Team Sectors can share their experience and expertise.
Coming Forward to Help
14 One of the things which we notice since we launched the CEP is that individuals have also stepped up to offer help. For example, the cartoonist from the Singapore Press Holdings, Mr Miel Prudencio Rosales Jr or Miel (as he is better known), has contributed a cartoon poster which explains succinctly the rationale behind the CEP. Mediacorp Radio has also kindly contributed the services of Ms Bharati Jadish of FM93.8Live as the master of ceremony today. We welcome all such support and initiatives.
Keeping Connected – Singapore United
15 As more organisations, groups and individuals participate in the CEP, one of the challenges we face is how to keep everyone connected and know what others across the various clusters are doing. Best practices, good ideas, networking, having an overview or stock-take, understanding the total picture of CEP developments – these are useful to all of us. That is why we are having this National Seminar today. We should continue to hold such periodic seminars or workshops not only to share but also to make new friends or re-affirm old friends. Nothing beats personal knowledge and contact. However, on a day-to-day basis, we should also leverage on technology to provide a platform for such a meeting.
16 So we decided to develop an internet portal called “Singapore United”. It will serve as such a platform for communication and dialogue within our CEP community as well as be a point of contact between our CEP community and the general public. This is a common space for us to interact and engage each other via the Internet. You will find an events calendar, maintained by respective cluster leads who are responsible for events of cluster members under them. You can check out the events calendar to find out more and to participate. If you are organising a CEP-related event, you can check on speakers and resources used by others as a reference. If you are researching on CEP-related topics, you can look up the archive for materials.
17 Incidentally, the name of “Singapore United” is inspired by comments and suggestions from the media members. Feedback from them has been helpful in narrowing our search for a catchy name for the web portal.
Work in Progress, Always
18 I sometimes get questions on whether we can be sure what we achieve through the CEP will prepare us to weather any crisis. The honest answer I can give is that the effectiveness of the CEP will only really be known when we are tested by adversity like a terrorist incident impacting our social resilience and communal relations. The work is never done because our society is dynamic and changing and the world is full of surprises and new challenges. In this sense the CEP is and should always be a work in progress.
19 Looking back after one year, I am impressed and heartened by what I see. While no one can guarantee we will be resilient enough to withstand any strain or shock to our society, I know that the CEP raises the odds in our favour as it prepares us to respond in a crisis, not as isolated individuals or parochial groups but as one people, as Singapore United.
