Should Singapore ever fall victim to a terror attack, trust will be the nation's greatest defence to rally together and rebuild in the aftermath, says Coordinating Minister for National Security Teo Chee Hean in an exclusive interview with Channel NewsAsia.
By Loke Kok Fai, Channel NewsAsia, 24 Dec 2015
As extremist terror grows increasingly globalised, no country can guarantee that it will not fall prey to attacks one day, said Acting Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean.
Speaking to Channel NewsAsia in an exclusive interview, Mr Teo, who is Coordinating Minister for National Security, said should an attack ever befall Singapore, the country's social cohesion must not be allowed to fracture.
"Trust is a very fragile thing. You can never take it for granted," he said. "It’s something which you have to work on all the time, every day, to make sure that where there are potential points of friction, you try and deal with them beforehand; where something actually comes up, you manage it in a constructive way."
Mr Teo added that this trust between communities in Singapore is also the nation's greatest defence, to rally together, reject the attack and rebuild in the aftermath.
"(It) provides us with a reservoir of strength and resilience should we ever face an attack," he said.
Mr Teo raised the example of pro-active steps taken by the Muslim community in Singapore to strengthen itself against the ideology of the Islamic State militant group, noting that messages of peace, social cohesion and harmony and a rejection of extremism, radicalism and violence are woven into Friday sermons at mosques across the island.
The Muslim community here promotes and practises Islam in the context of a multiracial, multi-religious society where mutual understanding and tolerance is required, he said.
By Loke Kok Fai, Channel NewsAsia, 24 Dec 2015
As extremist terror grows increasingly globalised, no country can guarantee that it will not fall prey to attacks one day, said Acting Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean.
Speaking to Channel NewsAsia in an exclusive interview, Mr Teo, who is Coordinating Minister for National Security, said should an attack ever befall Singapore, the country's social cohesion must not be allowed to fracture.
"Trust is a very fragile thing. You can never take it for granted," he said. "It’s something which you have to work on all the time, every day, to make sure that where there are potential points of friction, you try and deal with them beforehand; where something actually comes up, you manage it in a constructive way."
Mr Teo added that this trust between communities in Singapore is also the nation's greatest defence, to rally together, reject the attack and rebuild in the aftermath.
"(It) provides us with a reservoir of strength and resilience should we ever face an attack," he said.
Mr Teo raised the example of pro-active steps taken by the Muslim community in Singapore to strengthen itself against the ideology of the Islamic State militant group, noting that messages of peace, social cohesion and harmony and a rejection of extremism, radicalism and violence are woven into Friday sermons at mosques across the island.
The Muslim community here promotes and practises Islam in the context of a multiracial, multi-religious society where mutual understanding and tolerance is required, he said.
"This is quite different from the context in a number of countries, with preachers coming from their countries of origin. And the tendency therefore is to preach and practice an Islam which is contextualised to their original countries, and not to the countries in which they have settled and become citizens," he stated.
"This creates a problem because we have alienation. You have young people and people from the community (who are) not quite sure how to place themselves in the (wider) community and still be observant of their faith and beliefs."
He added: "We have another situation where a number of Muslim-majority countries, where Islam has now become a major part of politics, and enters into the political competition. Then there is an opportunity also, for those who are more radical, who are more extreme to find a platform in this competition with political Islam."
Adding to the challenge is the use of the Internet and social media by terrorist groups in reaching out to individuals of each region with tailor-made content.
Mr Teo estimates that around 700 to 1,000 people in Southeast Asia have joined the conflict in Syria and Iraq. Compounding the problem are hundreds of convicted terrorists, who are expected to be released from Indonesian prisons in the coming years.
"This creates a problem because we have alienation. You have young people and people from the community (who are) not quite sure how to place themselves in the (wider) community and still be observant of their faith and beliefs."
He added: "We have another situation where a number of Muslim-majority countries, where Islam has now become a major part of politics, and enters into the political competition. Then there is an opportunity also, for those who are more radical, who are more extreme to find a platform in this competition with political Islam."
Adding to the challenge is the use of the Internet and social media by terrorist groups in reaching out to individuals of each region with tailor-made content.
Mr Teo estimates that around 700 to 1,000 people in Southeast Asia have joined the conflict in Syria and Iraq. Compounding the problem are hundreds of convicted terrorists, who are expected to be released from Indonesian prisons in the coming years.
"Although ideologically there are differences, they do share a basic common platform and a tendency towards radicalism, extremism, and violence," said the Acting Prime Minister.
"So there is a, if you like, an ecosystem which presents a serious threat in our region to Singapore and to their own countries as well. So this is indeed a heightened threat situation which I think will be with us for some years to come."
“I commend our Muslim community and its leadership for their commitment to promote and practise Islam in the context of...
Posted by Teo Chee Hean on Monday, December 28, 2015
"Their planned terror attacks on the Christmas and New Year celebrations were complete," Indonesian police said.
Posted by The Straits Times on Thursday, December 24, 2015
Cyber security becoming key concern for nation: DPM Teo
While the Cyber Security Agency has been set up to make sure Singapore stays resilient to cyber attacks, international cooperation is also crucial, says Coordinating Minister for National Security Teo Chee Hean in an exclusive interview with Channel NewsAsia.
Channel NewsAsia, 25 Dec 2015
Cyber security is becoming a key concern, whether it is for the Government, banks, telcos or other infrastructural agencies, said Acting Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean. The Cyber Security Agency, set up in April, will work with each sector to make sure Singapore as a whole is resilient against cyber attacks.
However, international cooperation will also be crucial, as cyber-attack methods cross digital and physical borders.
Speaking to Channel NewsAsia in an exclusive interview, Mr Teo, who is the Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security, said the Cyber Security Agency not only deals with cyber attacks as they occur, but also takes a preventive approach to cyber security.
However, international cooperation will also be crucial, as cyber-attack methods cross digital and physical borders.
Speaking to Channel NewsAsia in an exclusive interview, Mr Teo, who is the Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security, said the Cyber Security Agency not only deals with cyber attacks as they occur, but also takes a preventive approach to cyber security.
As Singapore works towards achieving its vision of becoming a Smart Nation in the coming years, the Agency will work with various sectors to integrate cyber security into planning considerations and the design stage.
"Each of the sectors is different,” he said. “If you're talking about power systems, or if you're talking about water supply systems or a telecommunications system, or a financial and banking system, they're all different.
“They all have different threats. But this is an area in which it's a cat and mouse game. There are very many smart people out there who will try and find a way to penetrate systems for a variety of reasons. We have to - from the cyber-security, cyber-defence side - find ways to try and prevent them or to plug the holes if there are holes in them which we will find out later."
Singapore has also looked beyond its shores to strengthen its cyber defences, partnering countries such as India and the United States to cooperate and share expertise in this field.
"Inherent in cyber security often is that the attacks are either mounted or routed through other countries' servers, individuals and so on,” said Mr Teo. “So even if the mastermind is your own national, the likelihood is that you will route it through servers and paths that pass through many other countries.
“The entire enterprise may well be housed and located abroad. So this is an area in which countries inherently need to cooperate with each other."
Such cooperation is already beginning to pay off. Mr Teo said the international team at the INTERPOL Global Complex for Innovation, also set up this year, has carried out several successful operations to counter specific cyber-crime threats.
They include the use of stolen credit card data to fraudulent purchase of air tickets for use by criminal groups.
Security, economy, social cohesion among the main issues for Singapore in 2016: DPM Teo
In a wide-ranging exclusive interview with Channel NewsAsia, Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean lays out the priorities and concerns for Singapore in the next year. Most important is to make sure the country continues to have good, stable, clean leadership for the future, he says.
By Loke Kok Fai, Channel NewsAsia, 28 Dec 2015
The Committee for the Future Economy spearheaded by Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat is a "very major component of making sure Singapore thrives" said Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean.
In an exclusive interview with Channel NewsAsia, Mr Teo highlighted major issues for the country in 2016. Making sure Singapore has good, stable, clean leadership for the future and the challenge of maintaining social cohesion are among the concerns, he said. Mr Teo also touched on the heightened terror threat situation that will be with Singapore and the region "for years to come" because of the rise of the Islamic State extremist group.
Below is the interview in full.
DPM Teo Chee Hean: (Attacks) can occur even in places where security is high. We have to maintain and increase our vigilance. We require the public to help us because security forces are not everywhere, but do not have eyes everywhere.
The terrorism threat is certainly something that is heightened in Singapore and has become more prominent over the last two years with ISIS. The terrorism threat as a whole, we have seen bombings in Bangkok, in Paris, in San Bernardino. And these illustrate how the terrorism threat has been all around the world.
Not all of them are ISIS-related, but from our part of the world, we estimate that there’s somewhere between 700 to 1,000 persons who have gone to Syria and Iraq from our part of the world. Several hundreds, in the high hundreds from Indonesia, low hundreds from Malaysia, and a handful from Singapore and other places. They will return to our region, and that will cause a fairly major security concern for a number of years to come.
Apart from that, we can see that ISIS has also internationalised their actions. So they’re not confined to Iraq and Syria, but have also carried out or inspired attacks in other parts of the world. So this has certainly heightened the threat from terrorism to us.
Channel NewsAsia: What are we doing? Any steps to prevent the spread?
DPM Teo: The Muslim community in Singapore has been very proactive in taking steps to counter extremist ideology, radicalism as well as violence. And I must really commend the Muslim leadership and the Muslim community as a whole.
Because our Muslim community and the leadership is committed to the practice and promotion of Islam and the practice of Islam in the context of a multi-racial, multi-religious society. And this requires mutual understanding, tolerance, and the ability to work with all communities - every community being committed to this building of community cohesion and harmony in Singapore.
This is really the - if you like - the formula for social cohesion, peace and harmony in Singapore to which our Muslim leadership and our Muslim community is committed to.
This is quite different from the context in a number of countries where they’re facing serious problems. If you take a number of the European countries where the Muslim communities continue to practise Islam but with preachers coming from their countries of origin, and the tendency therefore is to preach and practise an Islam that is contextualised to their original countries, and not to the countries in which they have settled and become citizens.
This creates a problem because we have alienation, you have young people and people from the community are not quite sure how to place themselves in the context of their community and still be observant of the faith and their beliefs.
We have another situation where a number of Muslim-majority countries, where Islam has now become a major part of politics, and when Islam becomes a major part of politics and enters into the political competition then there is an opportunity also for those who are more radical, who are more extreme to find a platform in this competition with political Islam.
Whereas in Singapore, we are fortunate that we have a situation where the Muslim leadership and the Muslim community is committed to practising Islam in the context of a multiracial, multi-religious society.
Therefore the mainstream, the vast majority of Muslims in Singapore, the Muslim leadership are united together with all Singaporeans to fight extremism, terrorism, violence no matter what the source is. That means that all our communities have confidence in each other. And I’ve seen that happen when we have conducted seminars and discussions in a multiracial, multi-religious settings to bring everybody in Singapore, the main community leaders in Singapore on board, on this subject.
CNA: Any specifics that are being done to strengthen this? Especially if such an attack does happen in Singapore?
DPM Teo: Prevention is much better, and therefore we have, the Muslim community in Singapore has taken a number of very important, pro-active steps since we started discussing this with the community about two years ago. One of the steps they’ve taken is to make sure that in their Friday messages and sermons in the mosques, the message that they deliver is an appropriate one – a message of peace, a message of social harmony, and to reject extremism, radicalism and violence.
This itself is important because we know that in a number of countries where they’re facing problems we have radical preachers who are preaching quite the opposite. So you have an ecosystem or micro-ecosystem in some of those countries where this kind of poison is being placed into the community. Whereas in Singapore our community is learning and being preached with a message of peace, a message of social cohesion and harmony. So the broad ecosystem is different.
Our Muslim religious leaders also have made a study of some of the tenets that ISIS bases itself on and have developed a counter-ideology to refute this. And they carry this message also to the Muslim community and those individuals who might be uncertain or confused by the message that ISIS is carrying. So this is a very important, if you like, inoculation and an antidote for those in the community who may have come across such messages which emanate from ISIS. We of course use similar ideas and counter-ideological platforms to help those who have gone down, further down that path, and whom the security agencies have had to deal with to help to bring them back to the correct path. But that’s the approach we take.
And at one particular seminar where we had representatives and leaders from all faiths and all communities in Singapore together – this was almost a year and a half ago already – where we discussed the refugee problems and the refugee issues in Syria and Iraq and how difficult the lives of these people were.
The Muslim community said that they actually had reasonable contacts, good contacts, with a group which could channel funds in an appropriate way. Because otherwise if you just send funds without knowing where they end up, it could go into the wrong hands. And some of the other groups in Singapore, the non-Muslim groups, put their hands up and say “Yes, we feel the plight also of these refugees and we want to contribute to this fund as well. Tell us where.
And I thought this was a very important uniting moment as well, because we’re united in a common humanity, we’re united in wanting to live peacefully and in harmony together in a multiracial, multi-religious society in Singapore.
CNA: So you’re confident that what we have is robust enough to handle such an attack?
DPM Teo: Well the building of trust between communities, between individuals in the community, between the leadership in the community is something which has to be built up over the years. And we have invested a lot in our 50 years of independence to build up this social trust between communities, community leaders and individuals. And many of the policies which people sort of sometimes say “Why do you need to do this?”, you know things like our ethnic integration policies for HDB estates, the policies that we have to bring people together in our schools – primary schools and our secondary schools so that we feel as one in the schools. Where we have our food centres and our hawker centres – they’re mixed. People can eat together in the same hawker centre rather than separately; national Service as well.
And all these little things big and small, together contribute to social harmony and trust in Singapore. But we must remember that trust is a very fragile thing. You can never take it for granted, it’s something which you have to work on all the time, every day, to make sure that where there are potential points of friction you try and deal with them beforehand. Where something actually comes up you manage it in a constructive way. These are things which one never takes for granted, but they provide us with a reservoir of strength and resilience should we ever face an attack.
You can see that even in a country or a city that is placed on high alert, whether it’s in Sydney, whether it’s in Paris, an attack can occur. And so we need to maintain a high level of vigilance. Every Singaporean needs to be vigilant, but we must also always be prepared for the possibility that an attack can occur. The security agencies and also Singaporeans acting to help others, help each other in the event of an attack, can mitigate the consequences of such an attack. Reduce the casualties, help save lives and so forth. But the target of such terrorists is actually our social cohesion, and so this is something which we need to understand, and not let that be fractured in the event of a terrorist attack.
And I would say that in Singapore we have a better chance than in most countries, because we already have a great reservoir of goodwill and trust among all the communities in Singapore, and by drawing together in the event of such an attack, rejecting the premise, rejecting those who have carried out such an attack, and rallying around to support the victims and to rebuild. That I think would be very important in the event of an attack.
But of course the community also has a very major role in helping to prevent an attack, because the security forces cannot be everywhere, we cannot know everything, and that members of the community who see something, who know something which indicates to them something is not quite right – maybe it’s something that security agencies ought to just have a look at, do let us know. Particularly if you know family members or friends who are behaving in a different way than they used to be behaving, let us know. Because with the rehabilitation groups and the rehabilitation programmes we have, we can actually try together with the families and friends, to save these individuals from doing harm to themselves, from doing harm to others.
CNA: What are the vulnerabilities we face – especially in terms of traditional weaknesses and recent happenings?
DPM Teo: Because of the numbers who have been, from our region, in the high hundreds who are currently in Syria and Iraq participating in the conflict, because there are people who have previously been detained from the Jemaah Islamiyah group, in the hundreds, who have now reached the end of their sentences and are being released. Although ideologically there are differences, they do share a basic common platform and a tendency towards radicalism, extremism, and violence. So there is a, if you like, an ecosystem which presents a serious threat in our region to Singapore and to their own countries as well. So this is indeed a heightened threat situation which I think will be with us for some years to come.
What are the vulnerabilities? The new vulnerability is that actually self-radicalisation is a vulnerability. In the past, in the pre-Internet era, radicalisation took place and used to be centred around a specific preacher, a radical preacher or a leader, and he would have a small following. And among this small following he would identify those who are more succeptible, and then those would be developed further along this line. And so there was a physical structure, there was a physical group and a physical organisation.
But today, in the Internet era, you have very persuasive people and speakers on the Internet, they put up videos – ISIS videos in Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Melayu, which are targeted specifically to recruit and influence people from our part of the world. There’s a unit in Syria and Iraq today called the Katibah Nusantara which consists of people from our part of the world. So a person, young people particularly who are on the Net can access these sites and can become drawn in, mesmerised and influenced by what these sites offer and have to say.
And therefore you don’t have the same physical grouping and mapping which you can see say fifteen years ago. So that’s the major difference. Therefore you can have lone-wolf, clean skins – people whom you have not detected before, who suddenly appear and carry out an atrocity. And this can happen. And therefore it’s important that friends, families, who see the people who they know behave in a different way than before and who may be going down this radical line to raise the alert early to a religious teacher – the religious rehabilitation group has a hotline, or to raise it to the security agencies – the police, the ISD has a hotline, and we can try and work with the families and friends to try and save these people, to bring them back onto the right path.
So prevention is basically still the most important method of trying to reduce the risk of an attack. That’s from internal, from an attack on the inside.
We also have to make sure that our borders are secure – so border security, cooperation with other countries to exchange names of persons who have been radicalised and pose a danger, intelligence exchanges on what kinds of targets can be threats, and of course border security at our borders to make sure that the people who come into Singapore are properly checked to the extent that’s possible. Again, no country is able to protect everything, so we also depend on Singaporeans to be vigilant, and we also depend on Singaporeans to have the resilience to come together, rally together, in the event that such an attack were to occur.
No country can give a 100 per cent guarantee that there can be no attack, and anybody who gives you such a guarantee is telling you a lie.
CNA: Are there other transnational threats?
DPM Teo: One new threat which has been growing and which many countries face today is the threat of cybersecurity. Some of it is crime, some of it is perpetrated by nation states, some of it is perpetrated by non-state actors, and so every country faces this threat today. And this threat comes about, in part, because many countries today, the world trading system, banking systems, are much more dependent on the Internet and cyber-connectivity. So this becomes a threat, an attractive target for others, either to disrupt, to commit crimes, to steal, to obtain information or to carry out the equivalent of a terrorist attack but in the cyber world which has got a considerable impact on the lives of many people. So this is a new threat which all countries have to face and try to overcome.
We have had a cyber-defence type and cybersecurity-type agencies in various forms and in various parts of government over the years, but last year we decided to set up - in fact this year in April 2015 we decided to establish the Cyber Security Agency. It’s an agency under the Prime Minister’s Office overseen by the Minister for Communications and Information Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, and this will take both a preventive approach to cybersecurity, as well as the ability to deal with cybersecurity attacks should they occur. They will work with all the different sectors in Singapore – including the Government, banks, all the infrastructure agencies, telcos, the internet service providers, the whole range of them to make sure that they themselves are resilient, the nation as a whole is resilient.
One of the things that we want to do is to do it by design, particularly as we progress the Smart Nation initiative. We want to build in beforehand, by design as best as we can, cybersecurity considerations into the design of the Smart Nation initiatives that we’ll be rolling out in the coming years. But again this is an area in which it’s a cat and mouse game. There are very many smart people out there who will try and find a way to penetrate systems for a variety of reasons, and we have to, from the cybersecurity, cyber-defence side, have to find ways to try and prevent them or to plug the holes if there are holes in them which we will find out later.
CNA: How can we tap cyber-expertise, both local and external?
DPM Teo: Cybersecurity is an enterprise which inherantly requires international cooperation, because inherant in cybersecurity often is that the attacks are either mounted or routed through other countries – servers, individuals and so on. Even if the mastermind is your own national, the likelihood is that you will route it through servers and paths that pass through many countries. The entire enterprise may well be sort of housed and located from abroad. So this is an area in which countries inherantly need to cooperate with each other.
And we have a number of important intiatives here. On the crime side, we have the INTERPOL Global Complex for Innovation which was just set up this year, and it’s a cybersecurity and monitoring centre which brings together the INTERPOL members from around the world. And they have carried out some very successful operations to counter specific cybercrime threats including the use of stolen credit card data to fraudulently buy air tickets which are then subsequently used by underworld groups and so they have broken some of these rings, and that requires international cooperation.
In Singapore I think we have a reasonable standard of cybersecurity. I’m not entirely happy with it myself, none of us are, and that’s why we’ve set up the Cyber Security Agency to bring it up one or two notches higher than where we are today, and that’s what we need. And we are, with the Cyber Security Agency, working with each of the sectors. Because each of the sectors is different – if you’re talking about power systems, or if you’re talking about water supply system or a telcommunications system, or a financial and banking system, transportation systems, government systems, they’re all different. They all have different threats, and the Cyber Security Agency is working with each of them in their respective domains, drawing on their knowledge and expertise, to work together to try and do this first by design, and second to see how we can alert each other and then to react to any cybersecurity incident that may occur.
CNA: What can help with better trust and cooperation to regional issues, such as natural disasters and the haze?
DPM Teo: Natural disasters unfortunately do occur in our region from time to time because of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tyhoons, tsunamis and so on. And so very often no country working on its own has enough capacity to deal with the entire range of things that befall the sort of unfortunate group of victims in that specific locality or in those specific localities which are struck by this natural disaster. And so a system in which we help each other and bring resources to bear is a very useful one. In ASEAN we have such a mechanism, we’re working it through. We’ve exercised at a number of different levels, we’ve actually put it into action in some major incidents as well. But of course in this area, one can never do enough, one can never do as well as one wants to, and one can always do better. So this is the nature of dealing with natural disasters.
There are also issues like the haze, which affect many, many countries and many many people in the region, which I think we can cooperate much better on to deal with. Because I think this is an issue which can be dealt with if managed well. And Singapore’s only interest is to work with our friends and our neighbours to resolve this issue not just for the next year or for a particular year, but in the medium to long term. And we believe this is an issue which is resolvable with will, with commitment, with goodwill and with the correct application of good techniques and good technology. And we think it can be done and we hope that there will be this goodwill commitment and cooperation to deal with it deciselvely and to rid ourselves and save many millions of people in our part of the world from this scourge of the haze.
CNA: Are we truly progressing with regards to the recurring haze problem?
DPM Teo: For the haze issue, we understand that each country has certain of its own internal processes to go through. We want to encourage them to do so as expeditiously and as effectively as possible, and as I said our only interest in this issue is to work cooperatively with our friends and neighbours and the whole of ASEAN and the international community too to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and as decisively as possible.
CNA: What are the main issues we will face heading into 2016 and onwards?
DPM Teo: I won’t speak only of security threats because security threats are only one component of the challenges we face in the country, and I won’t look ahead just one year because that’s not the way the Government thinks and plans. We think and plan for the medium to long term for the good of Singaporeans and the good of Singapore. That’s the hallmark of Singapore. So I would say there are four things which we are looking to for the medium term – for the coming years.
The first is the economy, and Mr Heng Swee Keat is leading the Committee for the Future Economy, and this is a very major component of making sure Singapore thrives and does well in the future – good jobs, a thriving economy and continues to be a hub, a place where people would want to come to to do business and which provides a good living for Singaporeans as we move up the economic ladder. So this is a very important component, and we face serious challenges here because our population and our workforce are no longer growing. Our Singaporean population and workforce in the next five to seven years will stop growing, and this is a major, major challenge for the economy.
On the other hand, the skill levels of our people are increasing and can be increased further, so there are many opportunities to be exploited, what kinds of economic sectors, what kinds of activity, how do we link up with growing areas of the world, what are the sectors in which we have a competitive advantage. So this is one major component – the economy.
The second is security – something which we’ve been talking about earlier. Security is not just in terms of terrorism and extremism, although that’s the most salient threat that we are facing today, but also the more traditional security threats. Singapore will always be a small country in a part of the world which historically if you look back has been a place in which there have been instability, in which there have been wars and conflict. And so if we want to survive in peace and security as an independent country able to determine our own future, defence and security will always be an important component of Singapore.
Third is social cohesion, community bonding. How do we as a country maintain our social cohesion and bonds going into the future? And in particular, as we have migrants who come to Singapore, and the migrants include families of Singaporeans who marry with those who are non-Singaporeans, have children, and how do we bring (in) all of them and integrate them into Singapore. And I think eventually it is really the ideals and the values which Singapore lives by and which has grown by which unites us all.
And fourthly, I would say the most important of all is to make sure that we continue to have good, stable, clean leadership for the future. The last General Election has provided us with this platform and opportunity to do that, and it’s not just the leadership for the next term, next five years, but to prepare the leadership for the next 15 years to make sure that Singapore remains lead by able, honest, capable people with the right motivations, and the right heart for Singaporeans in Singapore. That itself is a major enterprise which should not be left to chance.
Because it’s a small country, if we fail on this one, we may never have a chance to recover with it.
In a wide-ranging exclusive interview with Channel NewsAsia, Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean lays out the priorities and concerns for Singapore in the next year. Most important is to make sure the country continues to have good, stable, clean leadership for the future, he says.
By Loke Kok Fai, Channel NewsAsia, 28 Dec 2015
The Committee for the Future Economy spearheaded by Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat is a "very major component of making sure Singapore thrives" said Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean.
In an exclusive interview with Channel NewsAsia, Mr Teo highlighted major issues for the country in 2016. Making sure Singapore has good, stable, clean leadership for the future and the challenge of maintaining social cohesion are among the concerns, he said. Mr Teo also touched on the heightened terror threat situation that will be with Singapore and the region "for years to come" because of the rise of the Islamic State extremist group.
Below is the interview in full.
DPM Teo Chee Hean: (Attacks) can occur even in places where security is high. We have to maintain and increase our vigilance. We require the public to help us because security forces are not everywhere, but do not have eyes everywhere.
The terrorism threat is certainly something that is heightened in Singapore and has become more prominent over the last two years with ISIS. The terrorism threat as a whole, we have seen bombings in Bangkok, in Paris, in San Bernardino. And these illustrate how the terrorism threat has been all around the world.
Not all of them are ISIS-related, but from our part of the world, we estimate that there’s somewhere between 700 to 1,000 persons who have gone to Syria and Iraq from our part of the world. Several hundreds, in the high hundreds from Indonesia, low hundreds from Malaysia, and a handful from Singapore and other places. They will return to our region, and that will cause a fairly major security concern for a number of years to come.
Apart from that, we can see that ISIS has also internationalised their actions. So they’re not confined to Iraq and Syria, but have also carried out or inspired attacks in other parts of the world. So this has certainly heightened the threat from terrorism to us.
Channel NewsAsia: What are we doing? Any steps to prevent the spread?
DPM Teo: The Muslim community in Singapore has been very proactive in taking steps to counter extremist ideology, radicalism as well as violence. And I must really commend the Muslim leadership and the Muslim community as a whole.
Because our Muslim community and the leadership is committed to the practice and promotion of Islam and the practice of Islam in the context of a multi-racial, multi-religious society. And this requires mutual understanding, tolerance, and the ability to work with all communities - every community being committed to this building of community cohesion and harmony in Singapore.
This is really the - if you like - the formula for social cohesion, peace and harmony in Singapore to which our Muslim leadership and our Muslim community is committed to.
This is quite different from the context in a number of countries where they’re facing serious problems. If you take a number of the European countries where the Muslim communities continue to practise Islam but with preachers coming from their countries of origin, and the tendency therefore is to preach and practise an Islam that is contextualised to their original countries, and not to the countries in which they have settled and become citizens.
This creates a problem because we have alienation, you have young people and people from the community are not quite sure how to place themselves in the context of their community and still be observant of the faith and their beliefs.
We have another situation where a number of Muslim-majority countries, where Islam has now become a major part of politics, and when Islam becomes a major part of politics and enters into the political competition then there is an opportunity also for those who are more radical, who are more extreme to find a platform in this competition with political Islam.
Whereas in Singapore, we are fortunate that we have a situation where the Muslim leadership and the Muslim community is committed to practising Islam in the context of a multiracial, multi-religious society.
Therefore the mainstream, the vast majority of Muslims in Singapore, the Muslim leadership are united together with all Singaporeans to fight extremism, terrorism, violence no matter what the source is. That means that all our communities have confidence in each other. And I’ve seen that happen when we have conducted seminars and discussions in a multiracial, multi-religious settings to bring everybody in Singapore, the main community leaders in Singapore on board, on this subject.
CNA: Any specifics that are being done to strengthen this? Especially if such an attack does happen in Singapore?
DPM Teo: Prevention is much better, and therefore we have, the Muslim community in Singapore has taken a number of very important, pro-active steps since we started discussing this with the community about two years ago. One of the steps they’ve taken is to make sure that in their Friday messages and sermons in the mosques, the message that they deliver is an appropriate one – a message of peace, a message of social harmony, and to reject extremism, radicalism and violence.
This itself is important because we know that in a number of countries where they’re facing problems we have radical preachers who are preaching quite the opposite. So you have an ecosystem or micro-ecosystem in some of those countries where this kind of poison is being placed into the community. Whereas in Singapore our community is learning and being preached with a message of peace, a message of social cohesion and harmony. So the broad ecosystem is different.
Our Muslim religious leaders also have made a study of some of the tenets that ISIS bases itself on and have developed a counter-ideology to refute this. And they carry this message also to the Muslim community and those individuals who might be uncertain or confused by the message that ISIS is carrying. So this is a very important, if you like, inoculation and an antidote for those in the community who may have come across such messages which emanate from ISIS. We of course use similar ideas and counter-ideological platforms to help those who have gone down, further down that path, and whom the security agencies have had to deal with to help to bring them back to the correct path. But that’s the approach we take.
And at one particular seminar where we had representatives and leaders from all faiths and all communities in Singapore together – this was almost a year and a half ago already – where we discussed the refugee problems and the refugee issues in Syria and Iraq and how difficult the lives of these people were.
The Muslim community said that they actually had reasonable contacts, good contacts, with a group which could channel funds in an appropriate way. Because otherwise if you just send funds without knowing where they end up, it could go into the wrong hands. And some of the other groups in Singapore, the non-Muslim groups, put their hands up and say “Yes, we feel the plight also of these refugees and we want to contribute to this fund as well. Tell us where.
And I thought this was a very important uniting moment as well, because we’re united in a common humanity, we’re united in wanting to live peacefully and in harmony together in a multiracial, multi-religious society in Singapore.
CNA: So you’re confident that what we have is robust enough to handle such an attack?
DPM Teo: Well the building of trust between communities, between individuals in the community, between the leadership in the community is something which has to be built up over the years. And we have invested a lot in our 50 years of independence to build up this social trust between communities, community leaders and individuals. And many of the policies which people sort of sometimes say “Why do you need to do this?”, you know things like our ethnic integration policies for HDB estates, the policies that we have to bring people together in our schools – primary schools and our secondary schools so that we feel as one in the schools. Where we have our food centres and our hawker centres – they’re mixed. People can eat together in the same hawker centre rather than separately; national Service as well.
And all these little things big and small, together contribute to social harmony and trust in Singapore. But we must remember that trust is a very fragile thing. You can never take it for granted, it’s something which you have to work on all the time, every day, to make sure that where there are potential points of friction you try and deal with them beforehand. Where something actually comes up you manage it in a constructive way. These are things which one never takes for granted, but they provide us with a reservoir of strength and resilience should we ever face an attack.
You can see that even in a country or a city that is placed on high alert, whether it’s in Sydney, whether it’s in Paris, an attack can occur. And so we need to maintain a high level of vigilance. Every Singaporean needs to be vigilant, but we must also always be prepared for the possibility that an attack can occur. The security agencies and also Singaporeans acting to help others, help each other in the event of an attack, can mitigate the consequences of such an attack. Reduce the casualties, help save lives and so forth. But the target of such terrorists is actually our social cohesion, and so this is something which we need to understand, and not let that be fractured in the event of a terrorist attack.
And I would say that in Singapore we have a better chance than in most countries, because we already have a great reservoir of goodwill and trust among all the communities in Singapore, and by drawing together in the event of such an attack, rejecting the premise, rejecting those who have carried out such an attack, and rallying around to support the victims and to rebuild. That I think would be very important in the event of an attack.
But of course the community also has a very major role in helping to prevent an attack, because the security forces cannot be everywhere, we cannot know everything, and that members of the community who see something, who know something which indicates to them something is not quite right – maybe it’s something that security agencies ought to just have a look at, do let us know. Particularly if you know family members or friends who are behaving in a different way than they used to be behaving, let us know. Because with the rehabilitation groups and the rehabilitation programmes we have, we can actually try together with the families and friends, to save these individuals from doing harm to themselves, from doing harm to others.
CNA: What are the vulnerabilities we face – especially in terms of traditional weaknesses and recent happenings?
DPM Teo: Because of the numbers who have been, from our region, in the high hundreds who are currently in Syria and Iraq participating in the conflict, because there are people who have previously been detained from the Jemaah Islamiyah group, in the hundreds, who have now reached the end of their sentences and are being released. Although ideologically there are differences, they do share a basic common platform and a tendency towards radicalism, extremism, and violence. So there is a, if you like, an ecosystem which presents a serious threat in our region to Singapore and to their own countries as well. So this is indeed a heightened threat situation which I think will be with us for some years to come.
What are the vulnerabilities? The new vulnerability is that actually self-radicalisation is a vulnerability. In the past, in the pre-Internet era, radicalisation took place and used to be centred around a specific preacher, a radical preacher or a leader, and he would have a small following. And among this small following he would identify those who are more succeptible, and then those would be developed further along this line. And so there was a physical structure, there was a physical group and a physical organisation.
But today, in the Internet era, you have very persuasive people and speakers on the Internet, they put up videos – ISIS videos in Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Melayu, which are targeted specifically to recruit and influence people from our part of the world. There’s a unit in Syria and Iraq today called the Katibah Nusantara which consists of people from our part of the world. So a person, young people particularly who are on the Net can access these sites and can become drawn in, mesmerised and influenced by what these sites offer and have to say.
And therefore you don’t have the same physical grouping and mapping which you can see say fifteen years ago. So that’s the major difference. Therefore you can have lone-wolf, clean skins – people whom you have not detected before, who suddenly appear and carry out an atrocity. And this can happen. And therefore it’s important that friends, families, who see the people who they know behave in a different way than before and who may be going down this radical line to raise the alert early to a religious teacher – the religious rehabilitation group has a hotline, or to raise it to the security agencies – the police, the ISD has a hotline, and we can try and work with the families and friends to try and save these people, to bring them back onto the right path.
So prevention is basically still the most important method of trying to reduce the risk of an attack. That’s from internal, from an attack on the inside.
We also have to make sure that our borders are secure – so border security, cooperation with other countries to exchange names of persons who have been radicalised and pose a danger, intelligence exchanges on what kinds of targets can be threats, and of course border security at our borders to make sure that the people who come into Singapore are properly checked to the extent that’s possible. Again, no country is able to protect everything, so we also depend on Singaporeans to be vigilant, and we also depend on Singaporeans to have the resilience to come together, rally together, in the event that such an attack were to occur.
No country can give a 100 per cent guarantee that there can be no attack, and anybody who gives you such a guarantee is telling you a lie.
CNA: Are there other transnational threats?
DPM Teo: One new threat which has been growing and which many countries face today is the threat of cybersecurity. Some of it is crime, some of it is perpetrated by nation states, some of it is perpetrated by non-state actors, and so every country faces this threat today. And this threat comes about, in part, because many countries today, the world trading system, banking systems, are much more dependent on the Internet and cyber-connectivity. So this becomes a threat, an attractive target for others, either to disrupt, to commit crimes, to steal, to obtain information or to carry out the equivalent of a terrorist attack but in the cyber world which has got a considerable impact on the lives of many people. So this is a new threat which all countries have to face and try to overcome.
We have had a cyber-defence type and cybersecurity-type agencies in various forms and in various parts of government over the years, but last year we decided to set up - in fact this year in April 2015 we decided to establish the Cyber Security Agency. It’s an agency under the Prime Minister’s Office overseen by the Minister for Communications and Information Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, and this will take both a preventive approach to cybersecurity, as well as the ability to deal with cybersecurity attacks should they occur. They will work with all the different sectors in Singapore – including the Government, banks, all the infrastructure agencies, telcos, the internet service providers, the whole range of them to make sure that they themselves are resilient, the nation as a whole is resilient.
One of the things that we want to do is to do it by design, particularly as we progress the Smart Nation initiative. We want to build in beforehand, by design as best as we can, cybersecurity considerations into the design of the Smart Nation initiatives that we’ll be rolling out in the coming years. But again this is an area in which it’s a cat and mouse game. There are very many smart people out there who will try and find a way to penetrate systems for a variety of reasons, and we have to, from the cybersecurity, cyber-defence side, have to find ways to try and prevent them or to plug the holes if there are holes in them which we will find out later.
CNA: How can we tap cyber-expertise, both local and external?
DPM Teo: Cybersecurity is an enterprise which inherantly requires international cooperation, because inherant in cybersecurity often is that the attacks are either mounted or routed through other countries – servers, individuals and so on. Even if the mastermind is your own national, the likelihood is that you will route it through servers and paths that pass through many countries. The entire enterprise may well be sort of housed and located from abroad. So this is an area in which countries inherantly need to cooperate with each other.
And we have a number of important intiatives here. On the crime side, we have the INTERPOL Global Complex for Innovation which was just set up this year, and it’s a cybersecurity and monitoring centre which brings together the INTERPOL members from around the world. And they have carried out some very successful operations to counter specific cybercrime threats including the use of stolen credit card data to fraudulently buy air tickets which are then subsequently used by underworld groups and so they have broken some of these rings, and that requires international cooperation.
In Singapore I think we have a reasonable standard of cybersecurity. I’m not entirely happy with it myself, none of us are, and that’s why we’ve set up the Cyber Security Agency to bring it up one or two notches higher than where we are today, and that’s what we need. And we are, with the Cyber Security Agency, working with each of the sectors. Because each of the sectors is different – if you’re talking about power systems, or if you’re talking about water supply system or a telcommunications system, or a financial and banking system, transportation systems, government systems, they’re all different. They all have different threats, and the Cyber Security Agency is working with each of them in their respective domains, drawing on their knowledge and expertise, to work together to try and do this first by design, and second to see how we can alert each other and then to react to any cybersecurity incident that may occur.
CNA: What can help with better trust and cooperation to regional issues, such as natural disasters and the haze?
DPM Teo: Natural disasters unfortunately do occur in our region from time to time because of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tyhoons, tsunamis and so on. And so very often no country working on its own has enough capacity to deal with the entire range of things that befall the sort of unfortunate group of victims in that specific locality or in those specific localities which are struck by this natural disaster. And so a system in which we help each other and bring resources to bear is a very useful one. In ASEAN we have such a mechanism, we’re working it through. We’ve exercised at a number of different levels, we’ve actually put it into action in some major incidents as well. But of course in this area, one can never do enough, one can never do as well as one wants to, and one can always do better. So this is the nature of dealing with natural disasters.
There are also issues like the haze, which affect many, many countries and many many people in the region, which I think we can cooperate much better on to deal with. Because I think this is an issue which can be dealt with if managed well. And Singapore’s only interest is to work with our friends and our neighbours to resolve this issue not just for the next year or for a particular year, but in the medium to long term. And we believe this is an issue which is resolvable with will, with commitment, with goodwill and with the correct application of good techniques and good technology. And we think it can be done and we hope that there will be this goodwill commitment and cooperation to deal with it deciselvely and to rid ourselves and save many millions of people in our part of the world from this scourge of the haze.
CNA: Are we truly progressing with regards to the recurring haze problem?
DPM Teo: For the haze issue, we understand that each country has certain of its own internal processes to go through. We want to encourage them to do so as expeditiously and as effectively as possible, and as I said our only interest in this issue is to work cooperatively with our friends and neighbours and the whole of ASEAN and the international community too to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and as decisively as possible.
CNA: What are the main issues we will face heading into 2016 and onwards?
DPM Teo: I won’t speak only of security threats because security threats are only one component of the challenges we face in the country, and I won’t look ahead just one year because that’s not the way the Government thinks and plans. We think and plan for the medium to long term for the good of Singaporeans and the good of Singapore. That’s the hallmark of Singapore. So I would say there are four things which we are looking to for the medium term – for the coming years.
The first is the economy, and Mr Heng Swee Keat is leading the Committee for the Future Economy, and this is a very major component of making sure Singapore thrives and does well in the future – good jobs, a thriving economy and continues to be a hub, a place where people would want to come to to do business and which provides a good living for Singaporeans as we move up the economic ladder. So this is a very important component, and we face serious challenges here because our population and our workforce are no longer growing. Our Singaporean population and workforce in the next five to seven years will stop growing, and this is a major, major challenge for the economy.
On the other hand, the skill levels of our people are increasing and can be increased further, so there are many opportunities to be exploited, what kinds of economic sectors, what kinds of activity, how do we link up with growing areas of the world, what are the sectors in which we have a competitive advantage. So this is one major component – the economy.
The second is security – something which we’ve been talking about earlier. Security is not just in terms of terrorism and extremism, although that’s the most salient threat that we are facing today, but also the more traditional security threats. Singapore will always be a small country in a part of the world which historically if you look back has been a place in which there have been instability, in which there have been wars and conflict. And so if we want to survive in peace and security as an independent country able to determine our own future, defence and security will always be an important component of Singapore.
Third is social cohesion, community bonding. How do we as a country maintain our social cohesion and bonds going into the future? And in particular, as we have migrants who come to Singapore, and the migrants include families of Singaporeans who marry with those who are non-Singaporeans, have children, and how do we bring (in) all of them and integrate them into Singapore. And I think eventually it is really the ideals and the values which Singapore lives by and which has grown by which unites us all.
And fourthly, I would say the most important of all is to make sure that we continue to have good, stable, clean leadership for the future. The last General Election has provided us with this platform and opportunity to do that, and it’s not just the leadership for the next term, next five years, but to prepare the leadership for the next 15 years to make sure that Singapore remains lead by able, honest, capable people with the right motivations, and the right heart for Singaporeans in Singapore. That itself is a major enterprise which should not be left to chance.
Because it’s a small country, if we fail on this one, we may never have a chance to recover with it.
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