Home Team National Day Observance Ceremony – Speech by Mr K Shanmugam, Senior Minister, Coordinating Minister for National Security, and Minister for Home Affairs

My Cabinet colleagues:

Edwin Tong,

Sim Ann,

Pei Ming,

Zhul,

Home Team colleagues,

Partners,

Volunteers,

Distinguished guests,


Introduction

1. A very good afternoon to everyone here.

2. A warm welcome to Zhul who has just joined us at Ministry of Home Affairs.

3. And congratulations to Sim Ann and Pei Ming on your recent promotions.

4. We come together today to celebrate 61 years of independence.

5. We have progressed, steadily and one of the key reasons is the strong security, law and order foundation that we have in Singapore.

6. Public trust in the Home Team continues to be extremely high.

7. Every year, I share with you our public perception surveys.

8. The latest Home Team Public Perception Survey shows extremely positive results across the board. Overall, close to 95% of respondents have given good ratings to the Home Team’s performance in keeping Singapore safe and secure. More than 93% of respondents trusted our officers to carry out their duties professionally, fairly and with integrity. A similar percentage had confidence in the Home Team’s ability to manage national crises. We have, year after year over decades, managed to maintain and continue to uphold this trust and build on it. And we should make sure that we never slack from that.


Evolving Threats – Youth Radicalisation

9. Today, I want to talk to you about a type of threat that we are managing, facing.

10. The world has changed. Technology has changed.

11. And we see the impact on our young people, our children.

12. I spoke about this on Monday.

13. In the past three months alone, ISD has picked up and detained three young boys under the Internal Security Act.

14. Three different cases. But all three planned to attack in Singapore.

15. They all read extremist content online. There is a range of options to be violent. Some of them are contradictory. But these young people are angry, and they find and choose different things that feeds the anger and allows them to attack somebody. It’s not unique to this generation. It’s just that every generation you will have people who get angry, but this has that being turbocharged online.

16. First of the cases was a 15-year-old boy. I want to share these details with you because it leads to a bigger point I want to make later, or at least a couple of bigger points. He wanted to carry out a mass casualty attack here. He researched on homemade explosives. He formed online group chats to recruit others.

17. Second case was a 19-year-old boy.

18. He made two attack plans. One targeted SAF officers at Sembawang Air Base and another was targeted LGBTQ students in his own school.

19. He also attempted to conduct cyber-attacks against the websites of Muslim organisations that he felt were deviant.

20. The third case was that of a 14-year-old, another boy.

21. He wanted to carry out stabbing attacks at his school using a knife from his home.

22. He had prepared a 21-page manifesto. He had a list of targets, and it identified non-Muslim teachers and students whom he wanted to attack.

23. And he wanted to livestream his attack, pledge allegiance to ISIS and take his own life.

24. He has planned to do this in June during the school holidays, and he was arrested just weeks before the holidays, through a tip-off from the school investigations, very close.

25. Since 2015, in the last 11 years, a total of 23 young persons aged 20 or below have been dealt with by ISD, 22 boys, one girl.

26. And younger and younger persons are getting radicalised.

27. In 2020, ISD picked up a 16-year-old, Christian boy.

28. He wanted to use a machete against Muslims at our mosques, the Assyafaah Mosque and the Yusof Ishak Mosque.

29. At that time, in 2020, he was the youngest person dealt with under the ISA for terrorism-related activities.

30. Now we are looking at 14 and 15-year-olds. It is not just Singapore. There have been attacks around the world involving 13 to 15-year-olds in Philippines and Australia. In Philippines, they carried out attack, killing three people, two boys. One of them, I think, was a 14-year-old.

31. It really takes less and less time now for people to become radicalised, to become violent.

32. It’s worrying and obviously in the context of schools, parents will worry whether their children are safe, and whether they should avoid schools with Muslim children. It is not a pleasant thing to talk about but I think we need to talk about these things openly because parents will react in that way.

33. And we as leaders, ought to say that this, that that is not the solution because attacks can take place anywhere, in malls, in other public places.

34. Since the 9/11 attacks in 2001, it’s been 25 years, a quarter of a century. In some countries, the Muslim population has been looked at with suspicion and fear. It has not made them safer, nor has it made their societies better.

35. In Singapore, our approach has been for the last 25 years, that those who want to do us harm, those who want to do these things, are a very small minority. We don’t ostracise or ringfence entire communities or treat them like they are guilty based on the actions of a very, very small extremist minority. It’s just not right. The vast majority of our MM community are law-abiding Singaporeans, and we are a very small place.

36. And in this small place, we either survive together in a small boat as one Singapore or we are all in trouble.

37. So, we cannot and should not let a few radicalised individuals poison the whole atmosphere, and affect the very strong bonds between the communities and the trust that they had built up along the racial and religious lines in Singapore.


Response of the Home Team

38. As Home Team, I would say the response to this, there are four aspects.

39. First, of course, the Internal Security Department, Police and MHA as a whole have to be on top of things. So far, we have been. But you know, we have to get it right every single time. The would-be attacker only needs to get it right once. We try our best. We have been successful so far. But obviously we can’t take that for granted.

40. Second, we have to have a proper legal framework to make sure we can deal with some of the factors that lead to ostracisation of communities and attacks on communities, rather than depending on pious hopes that that everyone will be good.

41. We protect our racial and religious harmony with very strong laws, Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act and Maintenance of Racial Harmony Act.

42. We set out what conduct would not be allowed when it comes to race and religion.

43. And if anyone attacks or even speaks ill of another community, we go in and we take firm action.

44. And over the years, we have strengthened and modernised these laws. And on the whole, the Singapore community keeps away. People in Singapore understand, most people are law abiding, most people understand that we are all together, communal bonds are strong and tolerance is high and people avoid, even the would-be attackers keep away from saying nasty things about somebody else based on race or religion. And that has made for a much better Singapore.

45. Third, we work with stakeholders, encourage understanding between communities, make sure community relations are good, prevent people from ostracising each other.

46. That is a critical task. The laws can tell you what you can’t do, but the laws cannot make you like each other.

47. So, organisations, particularly the People’s Association (PA), plays a huge role with our Resident Networks and our grassroots. Every weekend, hundreds of events across constituencies, bringing people together, of different ethnicities, celebrating each other’s festivals and doing secular events. You see Malay faces, Chinese faces and Indian faces, all coming together. And, you see, the organisers themselves also come from different backgrounds. We live next to each other. We work with each other, and we come together to celebrate.

48. The local MP comes round. That the PA and the events are organised, constituency after constituency, week after week, is actually the secret sauce, that is the glue that holds Singapore together. So we have the legal framework. We are tough. We move in, but something has actually been positive, and that is done by PA and all the grassroots organisations. We’ve got to keep track of that and work closely with them.

49. It’s going to be an active effort to build the bonds.

50. And fourth – we need to push on with SGSecure.

51. We will be celebrating 10 years since it was launched. It has helped us get mindshare of our people.

52. But we need to push more.

53. Last year, I asked my Ministry, let’s test ourselves. You know, we’ve had 10 years. How are we? How would Singaporeans react in a situation where it’s a cold start? Not organised, no advanced briefing – how many Singaporeans really understand the issue of security? How would they react to SGSecure?

54. So we conducted some experiments. Suspicious luggages were placed in crowded areas. We filled car with gas cylinders, made it look like a vehicle carrying explosives with wires sticking out. You can’t get any more obvious than that. Parked it near very busy walkways. Only about 17% who walked past the suspicious luggage and the vehicle noticed them. And of those who noticed, only about 5% actually took steps to inform the authorities. So, you know, earlier on I talked about the Home Team Perception Survey. More than 95% think that the Police Force and Home Team will deal with all issues. This is the reverse side of the same picture.

55. First, its only Home Team, it’s only me and our Home Team Leadership who keep talking about this. There is no attack. There hasn’t been an attack in 10 years, or even longer. Singapore feels very safe. This is a country where people place their wallets on tables in hawker centres as they go to order. So, you know, it’s being secure. The more secure we are, the less it is in people’s minds. And anyway, where there’s a problem, the Police will deal with it. ISD will deal with it. And so, even when we have a parked car with wires sticking out, next to a MRT station or something, nobody gives it a second thought. We can’t have that. We have to have the population part of our eyes and ears, and reporting. We cannot just have SPF and ISD. We have to have, in our schools, in our work places, in our people, have to incorporate this as part of their mindset.

56. We got to push harder. So I’m going to this year, focus on one or more of our political office holders and our SG Security. I think we’ve got to take this a lot more intensely.


Community Partnership

57. In the same vein, community partnership is a very important part of our work. Outcomes are better when the community is involved.

58. I am glad that many Singaporeans, like Mdm Sharon Tay, Mr Lutfi Lu’ay Bin Yazid and Mr Muhamad Yousuf Bin Akram. They all understand this. They are exemplars of what I’m talking about.

59. Mdm Tay has volunteered with the Yellow Ribbon Community Project for the past seven years.

60. She supports the families of ex-offenders and continues to support them even after the cases are closed.

61. The Government can put money on the table, it can provide programmes and assistance.

62. But they really work when you have people like Mdm Tay, who come in from the ground, from the community, give their time, help to build the trust, and walk alongside families in their journey. Again, many of them are part of the grassroots. They come forward, they build these. This is what makes Singapore so very different.

63. Partnerships like what Mdm Tay has built can take place over years.

64. But it can also be about stepping up quickly in a crisis.

65. Take Mr Lutfi and Mr Yousuf.

66. They saw a personal mobility aid catch fire in their residential block.

67. Mr Lutfi made sure his family was safe and then he helped evacuate other residents.

68. Mr Yousuf rushed to the scene with two fire extinguishers.

69. Together, they helped contain the fire, direct the residents away from danger, risked their own safety so that everyone got out safely.

70. Mdm Tay, Mr Lutfi, Mr Yousuf, they didn’t wait to be asked. They just looked out for one another and came forward to help. This is what we want to build even more. We have a very good base of grassroots leaders, others who have already come forward. I think we can build quite strongly on this.

71. Now, I would also, on the note of community volunteers, I would like to pay tribute the late Mr Lim Soo Peng.

72. Mr Lim had served on the Board of Visiting Justices and Board of Inspection for 55 years.

73. He had also served as a member of the DRC (Drug Rehabilitation Centres) Review Committee, for 25 years, from 1991 to 2015.

74. His lifelong commitment to public service demonstrates the very best of what it means to be a Home Team volunteer and a Singapore citizen.

75. We owe pioneers like him a deep debt of gratitude.

Conclusion

76. Let me conclude by turning to our Pledge.

77. The words in our Pledge: “ Regardless of Race, Language, or Religion ”.

78. The work continues to reject divisions along those lines, forge common ground, find strength in diversity.

79. And the Pledge begins with the word “We”. Not “I”.

80. The 61st anniversary of our independence, it is worth remembering that this was a deliberate choice.

81. Singapore cannot succeed if individuals only do what is good for their own interests.

82. We have to work together so that every Singaporean has a place and a stake in our country.

83. The Home Team, all of you, exemplify some of the best in that idea.

84. I thank you, our Home Team officers, volunteers, and community partners and your families for your dedication and service.

85. Let us continue to look out for one another, stand united, play our part in keeping Singapore safe and secure.

86. I wish everyone a very happy National Day.

87. Thank you.