Singapore Police Force Scholarship and Ministry of Home Affairs Scholarship Award Ceremony 2024 – Speech by Mr K Shanmugam, Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Law

Chairman PSC,

PSC Members,

Scholarship recipients, educators, families,

Home Team colleagues,

Good evening.

1. First, congratulations to our new scholars. You are now joining the Home Team. Our task can be stated in very simple terms, even though it is not simple. We keep Singapore safe. And we have to continue to keep Singapore safe.

2. You come in – that is your role.

3. In 2023, we were ranked one of the top three countries for order and security

in the  Rule of Law Index, the seventh time in a row. If you look at any index that measures this, we will be somewhere there. Number one, number two, or number three.

4. How did we get there? What are you joining? Usually, in these speeches, I keep things short. I congratulate people, thank you for joining us. But today, I decided I would take a little bit more of you time, because I think it is useful – people of your age and others here – to understand our approach a bit more.

5. What is our philosophy, how do we go about it, so that you understand what sort of organisation you are joining, and what sort of country, and what are the principles.

6. And I will do it by first, bringing you through and contrasting some recent events

in the United Kingdom (UK). Why the UK?  It is the country from which we inherited our laws, our system of policing, our law enforcement approach, our civil service, our entire system of government. We then adapted them to work for our society. Many other countries didn’t, but we did. So it will be useful to look at recent events in the UK, and then see what we have done differently. So that you, and your parents in particular, can be assured that you are joining a very different system where law and order is primary, and while it is a tough job, you are given the right framework to operate in, unlike many other places.

UK Riots

7. Some of you would know that since late July, the UK has been hit by a wave of riots. More than 15 towns and cities affected. Rioters have looted shops, burned cars – you can say the same of the US too, or France, or many parts of Europe – they have looted shops, burnt cars, targeted mosques, attacked police officers, hotels that they believed refugees. So far, nearly 400 have been arrested.

8. The causes of these riots – are many. Some which have been mentioned are : disinformation, hate speech, interference by foreign countries, Deep-seated resentments within society that have been growing and haven’t been addressed. And of course underlying socio- economic issues - jobs, housing, whether people feel that their lives are improving.

9. So let me just touch on some of these factors.

10. First , disinformation. The protests began as a result of falsehoods. There was a knife attack - the attacker killed three young girls in a preschool - very young, I think four or five years old. Rumours were that the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker.

11. The attacker was in fact born in the UK, in Cardiff, and raised as a Christian.

12. Within three hours of the attack on the young girls, the falsehood had gone viral,  gained traction on various social media platforms - X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and Telegram.

13. And of course, people became very angry when they see that these innocent young girls having been killed.

14. Second , hate speech.

15. Public figures and online influencers then added fuel to the fire by stoking anti-immigrant, xenophobic sentiments.

16. Rallies were held with chanting of slogans like “Stop the boats”, “You’re not English any more”.

17. There were then also counter-rallies held in response, calling for “Nazi scum off our streets”.

18. The New York Times reported that “ diminished trust in policing nationally, along with cuts to community policing ”, have made it “ harder for officers to deal with disorder ”.  Police officers in the UK are overworked, underpaid, and it is one of the areas where Budget cuts have affected them quite severely. Morale in the police force is very low.

19. A Straits Times report said that police forces were “ frequently overwhelmed by the rioters ”, and many British Muslims felt “ exposed and endangered ”.

20. Another contributing factor - immigration. A survey in February of this year (2024) found that more than half of British respondents , 52%, believed current immigration levels to be too high. Majority of Britons are unhappy with the levels of immigration. And their anger was then stoked online, encouraging violence.

21. Third , foreign interference.

22. The disinformation about the attacker was circulated and amplified online.

23. One example was ‘Channel3 Now’. Its falsehoods were widely quoted in viral posts on X. It has been described as a website that “masquerades as a legitimate American news outlet, but pushes fake viral video claims”.

24. An investigation by the BBC found that ‘Channel3 Now’ was a “commercial operation”, attempting to aggregate crime news while making money on social media.

25. The BBC also reported that pro-Kremlin (pro-Russia) Telegram channels reshared and amplified the false posts. This is a very well known tactic.

26. Downing Street – the (UK) Prime Minister’s Office - has said that it is investigating the role of State-sponsored bot activity in the ongoing protests.

27. There are also underlying socio-economic causes. If you look at public safety, just taking one snapshot, across England and Wales, more than 330,000 vehicle crimes, which included thefts and break-ins, which is 85% of all cases reported. They were all closed without any suspect caught – 85% of cases were closed without any person being held responsible. More than 100 neighbourhoods, 0% of reported car thefts were solved. Housing shortage, millions of homes short, 10% increase in a single year of the number of homeless; healthcare waiting list at 7.6 million – situation is a failing health system, financial pressures.

28. It is a sense of a society not working well.

29. Now bear in mind, that the UK probably had the best civil service in the world, and probably still has one of the best. It’s systems were world class.

30. This is a country that once ruled over half of the world’s population.

31. And this is happening.

32. You have a mix of factors, as I’ve said - disinformation, xenophobia, hate speech, foreign interference, poor control of Immigration, among others. So if you look at underlying - socio-economic factors, above that, a certain ideology which says free speech means you can have hate speech, you can attack each other based on skin colour, religion, falsehoods are not corrected, online vitriol, protests, all of this is allowed under an ideology of free speech. You have weak law enforcement. You have racial, religious hate speech, falsehoods, foreign interference, poor immigration control. The results then are lawlessness, riots, racial and religious attacks, cynicism, loss of trust in government. So you get what is been described as the worst riots in 13 years. It’s not that infrequent – in 2011 there were the London riots.

33. We don’t allow this in Singapore. You are joining – the scholars - a Law Enforcement System in a Government with a very different approach. And our results are also very different.

34. Let me explain.

35. We have tried to pre-empt such a situation from arising by having a carefully designed legal framework, and also carefully designed set of policies which give priority to law and order.

36. So, there are three aspects to this.

37. First, the legal and policy framework. We've got to get that right.

38. And, free speech is important. But we don’t not have much tolerance for fake speech. Fake speech doesn't come within the ambit of free speech. Nor do we have any tolerance for racial or religious hate speech. Nor do we have any tolerance for speech that incites violence, particularly if these can impact on law and order.

39. Let me explain. Look at the diagram I showed you earlier about the UK. And now let me show you how the picture is different in Singapore.

40. We start with protests. We regulate protests under the Public Order Act . So if you have a protest, we have a law which essentially prohibits protest unless you get a permit from the Police. And if you get past that, you have very empowered law enforcement agencies. So then it doesn't get beyond that.

41. Why don't we allow protests? People ask me, journalists ask me. You know, 50 people want to come together, they want to talk, they want to say they are unhappy.

42. Well, such gatherings often start off well-intentioned, led by honest, idealistic people. So that's what people say. Why don't you allow?

43. But what you see is that often these get hijacked. We can see from the examples that from the UK – people with their own agendas who want to create violence will get within these groups, and they will hijack these protests, and often try and engineer violence. So if you have 2000 people coming together, 50 in there will want to create violence, and what will happen is that –  they will throw stones, they will damage property. And from the police perspective, you don't know who is a good guy and who is doing the violence.

44. This has happened regularly. It happened in Hong Kong, Europe, Sri Lanka. Many such incidents. And then the police shoot and immediately the police are then put in an impossible position and targeted as “the aggressors”.

45. We don’t put the police in Singapore in such a position.

46. Because we say, you want to protest, you get a permit. Police will make an assessment. If there is the likelihood of law-and-order issue, there will be no permit given. And we say if you want to protest go to Hong Lim – confined space. There's no reason for you to create disamenities for everyone else in society.

47. And people say, why don't you allow protests on Palestine? If we allow that, the minorities want that. I tell some of them, then I will have to allow protests for Ukraine too. Then, I should allow protests against China relating to Uyghurs if people want to do that. Then, I should allow protests in Singapore about the treatment of minorities in Malaysia. We should also allow protests on domestic issues, including racial issues. So where do you draw the line?

48. It can't be that you're only allowed to protest on the issues you like, and no one else. I mean, if a large number of Chinese were to gather together in Singapore and protest against the treatment of Chinese in Malaysia by the Malays – how will the minorities feel?

49. We are very careful about this for good reasons, and we have a tough set of laws on incitement of racial and religious hatred, including a strict approach towards hate speech. So if you see racial and religious speech, we deal with it through the Penal Code. The MRHA, maintenance of religious harmony act, and racial harmony (act) which will come into force when we put the Bill in Parliament, assuming Parliament agrees. But that has got to be supported by ideology. So we don't take the same ideology as the British do. Our ideology is these are not allowed. So our laws underpin our ideology.

50. Because, when people are repeatedly exposed to hate speech. In Singapore, if one race can regularly put down another race based on skin colour or on religion, the latent prejudices, biases will accumulate, and eventually violence. We see that everywhere in the world. So we don't even allow it to start, and we take action, and the laws allow us to take action.

51. But the beauty of the system is, once there is this framework, the number of people who actually then go and do it is very small. Because we've had, you know, the MRHA for more than 30 years, the number of people who breach, or if you take the past five years, the police reports as a proxy. 199 reported cases relating to race and religion in five years, or 40 a year. With 1.3 million households in Singapore, 40 a year is one case for every 32,500 households.

52. It's non-existent, pretty much. And we are in a very tightly packed urban society where everyone is just next to each other, and yet, our people on the ground do not have much issues. Of these 199 cases, I'm fairly certain that probably a third were during the election year. Because at elections, everybody files police reports against everybody else. So if you remove that, actually, there are very few cases where people genuinely feel unhappy. So it's not just the laws. Our people become accustomed to a certain way of living, respecting racial and religious harmony. So it's convention now not to go and attack somebody else on the basis of skin colour.

53. So we maintain harmony. We tell preachers proselytize, say good things about your own religion, say good things about your own race, no problem. But you can't denigrate someone else. You can't put down someone else. And if you do, we talk to you. Usually people listen, and if they don't, then we take action. So far, in the 30 years of the MRHA, we haven't had to take extreme action. We've had to talk to a few people, and then they desist. And to prevent such speech, we have powers to issue restraining orders, and offenders can be required to take down online posts. So no possibility of it violating and inflaming passions. As I said, we will also be introducing the Maintenance of Racial Harmony Bill, broadly in line with the Religious Harmony Bill.

54. Then falsehoolds, we try to deal with that though something called POFMA – not totally because we don’t take down the falsehoods, but we put in a sticker saying this is a falsehood.

55. Foreign interference – we deal with through the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act, so you see that now. So it’s not that Singaporeans are naturally different, or started out different. But our framework acts as a shield, and beyond that, the few that get through, through the dotted line, we have empowered law enforcement agencies to stop it from getting to a riot, that stop it from getting into anything more serious.

56. So the result is no riots, racial attacks, lawlessness – the kind of stuff that you saw. FICA issues give us powers to stop if we see something like what was happening with Channel3Now – we would deal with it by taking it down.

57. And immigration, online issue. While immigration is an issue in Singapore, it's nothing like Europe, because we don't allow that sort of illegal immigration.

58. Immigration in Singapore is carefully controlled. We only allow a person to come into Singapore, if we think the person can significantly contribute to Singapore. We take a very tough line against boats and asylum, because we are too small. And I can understand, otherwise you'll be swamped, and you'll have the same kind of anger that you have in these countries in France, in the UK.

59. If you put all of them together, you can see: protest, racial, religious hate speech, falsehoods, foreign interference – we have legislation dealing with all of it, and our governing philosophy, which is the ideology is articulated, and that underpins having these laws.

60. And we explain to people, this is not a curbing of hate speech. This is a curbing of falsehoods, curbing of violence, and curbing of hate speech and the public square is not to be polluted by this. And underpinning all of this is a strong foundation of public trust and support.

61. You are joining an organisation, unlike Europe, unlike US, where confidence in the law enforcement agencies are sometimes in the low double digits. You are joining a Home Team.

62. Last year, survey, 92% of our Singaporeans respondents said they trusted the Home Team. 93% said confidence in the Home Team’s ability to keep Singapore safe and secure. You see how the picture fits in. Trust, ideology, legal framework, preventing all of this sort of negative factors from spilling on to society, or even requiring you to face politicians, just letting you go there and deal with it on your own. That doesn't happen. So the parents can be quite secure in the knowledge that you're sending your children to a system that really works and takes care, and understands what their role is.

63. You're joining a team with the highest levels of support from people of Singapore. And our law enforcement agencies - morale is very high and very strong, because we believe in proper remuneration, proper training. And when you talk about remuneration, our approach is a uniform officers’ annual salaries, are at the 70th percentile. It's higher than 70% of people of their cohort with similar job responsibility in the market.

64. If you look at the UK diagram, Singapore diagram, side by side, you see how it differs. We have a very effective legal framework as a shield, and we have a very effective law enforcement system as a shield, that the UK doesn't have; and their ideology, as well as the weak law enforcement system, weak legal framework and police force there is both undermanned and under supported, is part of the problem.

65. Mr Starmer, who was in public prosecution, understands, I think, the issues, and I'm sure he's determined to deal with them. We hope that they are able to deal with it. But there are quite a few things that they would need to set right.

66. But you know, don't forget, this is not the full picture. Underlying all of this, if people are angry, they don't have jobs, they are struggling for housing, they don't get proper healthcare, then no amount of legal framework or law enforcement is going to keep them off the streets, they are going to be out there protesting.

67. We make sure we have policies that work for our people.

68. One example of these policies, for example, is the Ethnic Integration Policy in our public housing estates. We are probably the only government in the world which has a policy to ensure that every estate to have a certain percentage of Malays, Indians and Chinese, so that we don't get ethnic enclaves, and everyone has to live and get along with everyone else. You don't get the sort of neighbourhoods entirely white or entirely African or entirely of a different skin colour, the banlieues like in France. And many other policies.

69. Leaders from different ethnic and religious communities are regularly put together, constituency by constituency, to organise common activities for all Singaporeans, to build mutual trust. We have Racial Religious Harmony Circles. Every week across Singapore, there are hundreds of such interactions involving 1000s of people. When people do things together, celebrate each other's festivals, you have a greater appreciation for others, you reduce the potential for hostility. The grassroots events, every weekend across Singapore, it's very important to do that. It's part of the reason why we are as stable as we are. So all these aspects I mentioned have to go together.

70. And so when you look at it, our worst riot – I think one goes back to 2013 – I wasn't in Home Affairs at that time, but I was pulled in to try and deal with it. And I talked to some journalists. And after I explained it, they scratched their head, and they said, so you call this a riot? 300 people, foreign workers, running a little bit out of kilter. This happens outside a great football stadium in UK every weekend. So why are you all so concerned about this?

71. Our tolerance levels are very different. That's our worst riot. And as a result of all of this, what you see is that we get very positive outcomes. If you look at education, we are ranked number two with China, number one without China.

72. If you look at it in terms of X and Y, how much we spend and what our results are. You look at how much we spend, where we are in terms of scores – the highest and we spend the least. Housing, home ownership at 93%. Law and order, ranked number one by Gallup; 95% of adults in Singapore feel safe working home alone at night.

73. Many, many surveys, and recently, there was a Foreign Policy article, June of this year, comparing citizens’ well-being in Singapore, US and UK. If you look at it, we at least number one in most of it - healthcare satisfaction, educational system satisfaction, judicial system satisfaction, rule of law, political stability. Government effectiveness at 100%, regulatory quality at 100%, corruption control at 98%.

74. Even on subjective factors like satisfaction of democracy, perceived individual political influence, satisfaction of government performance – we scored better than the US and the UK.

75. This is a system that you are joining, to protect and keep going.

76. No one is throwing you into a system that is facing the frontline of protests everyday – that won’t be allowed.

77. Framework is strong, morale is strong, and the system is strong, people are good. You are joining a first-rate organisation.

78. We look for people like you, because the organisation can succeed only if good people continue to join us.

79. Your task, when starting out, is to keep Singapore safe. Make sure Singaporeans can continue to feel that they can walk home alone safely at night.

Cultivating Talent for a Strong Home Team

80. We need people with strong values – integrity, fairness, and a desire to serve Singaporeans.

81. We want to recruit the best and brightest, including through scholarships.

82. I am pleased to welcome 32 scholars to the Home Team this evening.

83. Five are recipients of the Singapore Police Force Scholarship - Dylan, Darrius,

Isabelle, Yiyang, and Zongkai.

84. To all scholarship recipients, tonight marks the beginning of your journey with the Home Team.

85. Enjoy your studies. Consider different points of views, and assess them with an open but critical mind. Keep in mind, that philosophies and values, which may be suitable in one context or country, may not be appropriate in another place or context.

86. I have been recipient of more than 30 years of lectures from Americans, Brits and Europeans as to why their systems are superior.

87. I generally have told them that we have prospered by ignoring what you told us. I’m not telling you to ignore, because you are students, but apply a critical mind and read widely.

88. When you return from your studies, we will train and develop you further.  Have faith that as you learn and grow, you will be ready to shoulder the responsibilities of responding to the challenges that we face.

Conclusion

89. I also want to particularly thank the parents, family members, teachers and principals here this evening. You have nurtured these promising young people.

90. It is a testament to the role you have played in their upbringing, and the values you have imparted to them.

91. Congratulations again, to all our new scholars, your parents and your teachers, and a very warm welcome to the Home Team.

92. Thank you.