The recent cases of offensive online comments will not be the last. But society's response cannot be to demand arrest and prosecution or keep seeking new curbs on the Internet
By Cherian George, The Sunday Times, 1 Apr 2012
In the search for solutions for overcrowded MRT trains, a prize for out-of-the-box thinking must go to the 19-year-old Singaporean who proposed separate cars for Indians.
Her expletive-laden tweet last week was a reminder that Singapore's race relations are not always as harmonious as those sentimental National Day videos.
Many Singaporeans have expressed outrage at such racist thinking. Others are more alarmed that a tertiary student could be stupid enough to show it.
On one prominent political website, comments have been divided. Some readers have defended the girl, with one even calling for scientific research to uncover why Indians smell (seriously).
Evidently, many netizens reserve their zero-tolerance stand against racism for cases where the perpetrators are foreigners. Singaporean-on-Singaporean racism is often met with ambivalence.
Overall, however, majority opinion in Singapore - regardless of race, language or religion - is convinced that such speech does not belong in the open. The resulting chorus of condemnation that greeted the girl's tweet was reassuring.
Perhaps, though, we need a more intelligent collective response to such breaches, of which last week's is certainly not going to be the final one.
In some societies, offensive speech is discounted as part of the cost to be borne for freedom of expression. Ours, clearly, is not one of those societies.
Instead, when confronted with such unpleasant sights, Singaporeans are quick to question whether the windows have been opened too wide. Someone will call the cops. Others will decry the ills of the Internet.
Both responses are understandable but neither is particularly productive.
Broad laws
Lodging a police report has become the standard citizen response to offensive online speech. On the bright side, such automatic reliance on the police may reflect trust in the authorities to act as neutral arbiters in ethnic disputes.
However, it is also a symptom of Singaporeans' over-dependence on the Government to deal with problems.
The risk of over-reliance on the state to maintain social harmony is built into our broadly worded laws.
Most societies give their governments some powers to regulate offensive speech, but international human rights norms state that these powers should only be a last resort.
Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights requires that 'any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law'. What's legally offside is extreme speech that would have a tangible effect on the rights of others if left unchecked.
Singapore lawmakers, in contrast, have instituted a much lower threshold.
So intentionally 'wounding the religious or racial feelings of any person' through any expression is a jailable offence under Section 298 of the Penal Code. Section 298A uses similarly subjective language, prohibiting expressions that promote 'disharmony' between religious or racial groups, or any act that is known to be 'prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony'.
The sweeping powers that Singapore's statutes give to the authorities are perhaps a reflection of the strong societal consensus that race and religion must be handled delicately, including at the expense of freedom of expression. However, these powers need to be used sparingly.
This was less of a problem in the past, when traditional media gatekeepers could be counted on to stop most offensive speech from entering the public sphere, leaving the police with less to mop up.
With the Internet, however, words and pictures regularly pop up that fall in the category of 'wounding the religious and racial feelings' of readers and viewers. Turning every such incident into a police case is simply unsustainable.
'Internet-centrism'
The other habitual public response to offensive online speech is to reopen the debate on Internet regulation. Because things happen on the Internet, people are quick to assume that it is Internet policy that should be fixed.
This fallacy is part of what Evgeny Morozov has called 'the Net delusion'. In his 2011 book of the same name, he criticises 'Internet-centrism' - the tendency to reframe every question in terms of the Internet instead of other factors.
Morozov's beef is with the United States government's obsession with the Internet as a tool for democratising closed regimes.
In Singapore, you can see Internet-centrism at play in debates about social problems such as racism, making Internet regulation and censorship seem like the obvious policy levers to pull.
This obsession with the Internet is not surprising, as it is easily the most charismatic technology of the last half-century. But it is probably time to get over it.
Imagine if we focused on the role of motor vehicles in modern life the way we focused on the Internet.
Cars and other vehicles are regularly used by criminals; occasionally, individuals commit suicide in their automobiles and, every night, unmarried lovers use them in lieu of short-time hotels.
Whenever we learn of such activities, we don't launch into a debate about the merits and demerits of motor vehicles. It doesn't occur to us to revise the Highway Code.
Of course, when there is a clear link between the technology and the harm - like when kids get hurt in a school bus without seat belts, or workers are killed while being transported in a lorry - we know it may be time to tighten traffic regulations.
But, sensibly, we don't instinctively propose vehicle-centric solutions to problems just because vehicles happen to be involved.
Just like vehicular transport, the Internet is now woven into the fabric of everyday life.
Since life is full of good and bad, we should not be too surprised to see all manner of bad things surfacing on the Internet.
To focus on the medium can distract from the real solutions, and make regulation and censorship seem deceptively attractive.
Civic responses
Our responses to expressions of racism need to be carefully weighted.
On the one hand, we shouldn't succumb to moral panics that cloud our judgment: In most cases, it is not necessary to invoke the law or review Internet regulations.
On the other hand, we shouldn't be so blase about breaches that racist speech becomes normalised. While it would be futile to try to eliminate such speech from the fringes of society and in the private sphere, we can realistically aim for a public sphere where nobody has any doubt that racist speech is regarded as morally wrong.
It's wrong not only because it hurts the targeted community's feelings but also, more importantly, because it pushes them to the margins and undermines the principle of equality - which is as important a democratic right as freedom of speech.
There will, of course, be some instances where many Singaporeans do not feel a line has been crossed in the first place.
This is probably why United Overseas Bank (UOB) got off comparatively lightly after some of its Chinese employees showed up for a Bollywood-themed staff party with their skin painted black.
Reducing an ethnic group's essence to a set of physical attributes is one of the crudest forms of racism, and it is no accident that such stereotyping has been part of the ideological arsenal of every genocidal society in history.
UOB issued only a qualified apology - 'if' members of the public had been offended.
In countries more attuned to the way racism works, such a response would have been greeted with consumer boycotts and tough questions at its annual general meeting. UOB evidently feels that its home base is not such a country - and it is probably right.
Citizens should do more to assert vigorously the norms of civility, tolerance and respect for diversity. This is a job for journalists, bloggers, parliamentarians, community leaders, activists and other opinion leaders.
There's also scope for creative civic responses.
Take, for example, last year's heartwarming 'curry day' campaign, conceived by a non-Indian Singaporean to thumb a nose at complaints from an immigrant family about curry smells wafting into their flat. This is the kind of vigorous grassroots activism needed to counter assaults to our sense of what Singapore should be.
Instead, we have too often outsourced to the Government the responsibility of building a cosmopolitan society. Such habits are self-perpetuating, giving people insufficient practice in dealing with racism and prejudice, and resulting in a society that is less resilient than it could be.
Cherian George is an associate professor at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University.
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