As with many others in Singapore, I wouldn’t have noticed what was lacking in the local rags’ reporting of the Charlie Hedbo massacre. Once I was alerted to it, I got really upset.
You had to scroll down at least three-quarters of any of the papers’ stories before you saw any mention of the murderers’/terrorists’ ideology driven motives. It’s very easy to think it’s ok to think, “this is a sensitive region, we’re in a sensitive time, some idiot wrote some shit on their Facebook and so we shouldn’t inflame things further, so let’s shut up about religion and ideology for now”.
It is a most shameful silence we are perpetrating if we don’t really come out and speak out against people killing and spreading hate in the name of their religion. So please, come off it, and know that saying it like it is will protect, not harm, our Muslim fellow citizens from people who will by all means take the Charlie Hedbo massacre as a reason to deny them of theirs and our right to practice our religion.
If our press keeps going on like this, you’d imagine they would have described the Holocaust as merely “six million civilians killed in conflict”.
Stand up, Singapore! “Regardless of language, race or religion” doesn’t mean we disregard them.
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