Singapore never allow prejudice against any community: PM Wong
Singapore must never allow prejudice against any community to become accepted or normalised, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said on Sunday, days after racist and xenophobic comments appeared online about the Nepal-Tibet flash floods disaster and the Singapore Airlines-Air India partnership.
“We can and should have robust debates. But we should never use seemingly legitimate arguments as a cover to fuel prejudice against any community or hostility towards foreigners,” the Channel News Asia quoted Wong as saying.
The prime minister’s remarks come a day after Singapore Senior Minister K Shanmugam said police are investigating “shameful” and “totally unacceptable” racist and xenophobic comments posted online about the Nepal-Tibet flood disaster and Singapore Airlines’ (SIA) investment in Air India.
In a Facebook post, Wong said that “an uglier side” had emerged in online discussions about the two matters.
Racist comments surfaced online targeting some of the nine Singaporeans missing in the Nepal-Tibet disaster, while questions about SIA’s investment in Air India were “accompanied by anti-Indian abuse”, he said.
While such views do not represent Singapore, they should not be dismissed as “harmless online chatter”, he said.
“If such behaviour goes unchecked, it can become normalised, deepen mistrust between communities, and pull us apart,” Wong said, adding that he had discussed the developments with his Cabinet colleagues and that this was why Shanmugam had spoken about it. Singapore has an overall population of over six million – of which 75 per cent are Chinese, 15 per cent Malays, about nine per cent Indians and the rest from other countries.
The prosperous city-state is trying to manage a declining population due to a low local birth rate and depends on foreign talent to maintain its high-performance economic activities as part of the global network, which has already been badly hit by the West Asian conflict, a diplomatic observer said.
Wong said that Singapore had encountered similar tensions before, pointing to how “anti-foreigner” and “racial sentiments” were stirred up during the COVID-19 pandemic and surfaced during debates over the Singapore—India Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement.
Such sentiments also surfaced during the 2025 general election, when Wong spoke out against attempts to bring race and religion into politics.
“There will always be people who seek to exploit our differences,” Wong said.
While it is impossible to prevent every hateful comment from appearing online, Singaporeans could choose how they respond to them, he said.
“We can reject such views, and refuse to give them more space or legitimacy.” “Singapore has held together because we have consistently rejected attempts to divide us along racial or religious lines, and chosen instead to recognise one another as fellow Singaporeans,” said the prime minister. Former prime minister and now a Senior Minister in the Cabinet, Lee Hsien Loong, on Sunday also called on Singaporeans to “stand by one another regardless of race, language or religion”.
In a Facebook post, Lee described racist comments directed at the Indian community in Singapore following the recent floods in Nepal as “deeply troubling”. He added that it was “equally troubling” when issues such as SIA’s investment in Air India were “distorted or exploited to stir vicious racial, anti-Indian resentment”.
Expressing his condolences to those affected by floods, Lee said the tragedy had left many families grieving and that response should be one of “compassion and solidarity”.
He also noted that Shanmugam had “laid out the issues clearly” in his statement on Saturday. “When incidents like this happen, leaders must speak up with force and conviction, to call out what is happening, condemn the manipulation of base emotions, and call on all Singaporeans to stand together,” the Channel quoted Lee as saying.
