Thursday, July 26, 2007

Should Racial Harmony be Encouraged in Singapore?

Singapore is a multi racial country. Four different main races, Chinese, Malay, Indian and Eurasian, living together in a small island. They are of different culture, different respect, and different religion. Sometimes, it is difficult to avoid the conflicts between different races because of misunderstanding. Therefore in order for the citizens to enjoy peace in Singapore, I believe racial harmony should be encouraged.

In order for a country to progress and achieve prosperity, it must be peace and safe before any investment and progression to happen. It is extremely important for the citizen to be united. To minimise the cultural gap between the races, racial harmony should be encouraged. Different races should respect each other religion and culture by tolerant and understanding. For example the racial riot in 1964. It started of as a celebration of Prophet Muhammad's birthday. However, a group of Malays refused to rejoin back the procession after the speech and attacked the policeman. This incident has led to a racial riot which lasted for 13 days. The cause of it is believed to be the agitation by Syed Jaafa Albar. Yet if the Malays and Chinese trusted and understood each other, the riot would not be occurred. There would not be 4 dead and 178 injuries. Thus it is important to have harmony between races to ensure peace and safety in Singapore.

Singapore, being a small red dot, does not have many natural resources. The one and only resource is the citizen. However, because of the ageing population, there is lesser working adult in the market. It would reduce the competitiveness and productivity of the economy. Therefore Singapore government is in the need of attracting foreign talents to Singapore. A religious harmony society would be attractive to foreign talents because they can be accepted by the society easily. No one would discriminate them. They could still live in the way they used to be in this cultural divergence country.

As the declaration on religious harmony has stated, " We, the people in Singapore, declare that religious harmony is vital for peace, progress and prosperity in our multi-racial and multi-religious Nation." Racial harmony is definitely important to every people living in Singapore regardless of race, language or religion.

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