Rilek1Corner

Tag: Indian

  • Court: Headless Woman Killed By Husband

    Court: Headless Woman Killed By Husband

    Upset that his wife was making a long-distance call to a mystery party, he reportedly punched her in a fight and left her lying on the bed.

    It was only later, he told a friend, that he realised that she was not unconscious, but dead. That was when he decided to get rid of the body.

    A coroner’s court found yesterday that Indian national Jasvinder Kaur, 33, had been murdered by her husband, Harvinder Singh, 35, on Dec 11, 2013.

    Ms Kaur’s headless body was discovered floating in Whampoa River on the morning of Dec 12. Her corpse was wrapped in black trash bags, with the legs exposed and hands severed at the wrists.

    Harvinder, a senior logistics coordinator, remains on the run. His friend, fellow Indian national Gursharan Singh, 27, was jailed for 30 months in April for helping to get rid of Ms Kaur’s body.

    Gursharan, a forklift driver, had helped Harvinder carry a luggage bag from the latter’s residence at 228A Balestier Road to the canal near McNair Road.

    When Gursharan grew suspicious at how heavy the bag was, he demanded to know what was in it. Harvinder then explained that he had fought that morning with Ms Kaur and punched her once on the neck.

    He said she had fallen onto the bed and he had left her there. When he found her in the same position later, he realised she was dead and decided to dispose of her body.

    Although Gursharan was then aware that the luggage contained a corpse, he helped Harvinder carry it to the canal. Harvinder then told him to walk away. As Gursharan left, he heard a splash.

    Ms Kaur’s employer told investigators that after the deceased failed to turn up for work as a beautician on Dec 11, Harvinder called to say she was returning to India.

    Harvinder fled the next morning to Malaysia, and then to India, where the authorities were unable to trace him. He is now on Interpol’s wanted list.

    The exact cause of Ms Kaur’s death remains unknown as her head and hands were never found.

     

    Source: www.straitstimes.com

  • To My Dear Fellow Singaporean Chinese: Shut Up When A Minority Is Talking About Race

    To My Dear Fellow Singaporean Chinese: Shut Up When A Minority Is Talking About Race

    People of Chinese descent make up 70% of the population of Singapore. Singapore Chinese, as they are termed, enjoy systemic, racialized and institutional privilege in the country as opposed to the countries’ minorities (primarily racialized as Indian and Malay).

    “Chinese privilege”, as Sangeetha Thanapal has named it, functions very similarly to white privilege in the United States and Europe. To use Peggy McClintock’s notion of white privilege and the invisible knapsack, Chinese privilege functions like an “invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious. [Chinese] privilege is like an invisible weightless backpack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.” As a Singapore Chinese person, when I am in Singapore, I never need to think twice about whether my race/ethnicity is represented on mainstream media, whether my languages are spoken, whether my religions are allowed to exist, whether I can catch a taxi. All these things are little aspects of Chinese privilege which is very similar to how white privilege functions. You can find out more about the concept of white privilege here.

    Despite Chinese privilege in Singapore being very real, there is little or no recognition of this concept within the national public sphere and discussions of race. Attempts by minorities such as Thanapal to name this privilege often receive hostile attack from Singapore Chinese, who employ defensive mechanisms similar to deniers of white privilege—to name privilege is divisive, to name privilege is not a solution, to name privilege is rude, to name privilege is racist. In a stroke of unfunny irony, what happens then is that minorities who call out Chinese racism are then termed racist by their aggressors.

    This is very sad because Singapore Chinese themselves often complain how they are victims of racism themselves, particularly when they visit Western countries. They complain about being complimented on their command of English (don’t these people know we were colonized by the English?!), complain about being treated as second-class citizens while abroad. However, they are in complete denial of how they take on the very role of what they claim to be victim of at home. In other words, they complain about racist treatment while overseas while being racist towards minorities in Singapore.

    So if you are a Singapore Chinese person—and I am a Singapore Chinese person myself—if someone who is not white or not Chinese starts talking about race, you should really think about doing the following things.

    1. Shut up and listen. Because of your privilege, the speaker will be saying a lot of things that are foreign to your experience. But that you don’t think they are “true” doesn’t mean that they are untrue, it’s rather than your privilege shields you from seeing these things.

    2. Stop asking them to justify their thoughts and for facts, statistics, data, argument. It’s not the job of marginalized people to educate you.Undertake your own education.

    3. Your point of view is not important. If someone is speaking about race in Singapore who is neither white nor Chinese, their stories are not told as frequently as yours. So stop making their narratives about you and what you think. This is not your party.

    4. It’s also not up for you to decide whether the person speaking is “right” or “wrong.” That you think your opinion is important is already indicative of how much privilege you have, and how ignorant you are of it.

    5. Because you experience racism yourself in other locations, this should not inure you to your own racism at home, but rather, encourage you to have more *empathy* for those who are more marginalized than you are.

    6. EDITED TO ADD. If you want to help, next time someone asks you for a perspective on race, ask a minority who studies racial dynamics. That means asking people like Thanapal to speak rather than a Singapore Chinese like me.

    If you feel like you disagree with this article and are Singapore Chinese,please read this. And finally, if you are interested to find out more about why I think the way I do, please read: “White in One Space, Yellow in Another: Being Singaporean Chinese.”

    Source: https://medium.com

  • SIA Ordered To Pay Indian Customer S$735 In Compensation For Downgrading Ticket Class

    SIA Ordered To Pay Indian Customer S$735 In Compensation For Downgrading Ticket Class

    Singapore Airlines (SIA) has been ordered by an Indian consumer protection council to compensate a businessman 35,000 rupees (S$735) for downgrading his ticket from business class to economy without prior notice.

    According to a report in New Indian Express, the businessman, Mr GVK Reddy, had flown on flight SQ528 from Singapore to Chennai on Apr 19, 2011. However, he was told at the check-in counter that his business-class seat had been downgraded to economy class. As compensation, the airline gave him a S$600 voucher – the difference in the classes’ ticket price.

    Mr Reddy protested but had no choice but to take the seat offered by the airline, the report said. He later filed a legal notice with the airline seeking compensation of more than S$104,000 for costs including damages, deficiency of service, and causing him mental agony and pain.

    In a written reply, SIA argued that Mr Reddy was the last person to make a booking for a business class seat and was also the last to arrive for check-in, by which time, the business-class tickets were overbooked. The ticket conditions also make it clear to passengers that they may not be able to travel in their chosen class due to overbooking, the report quoted the airline as saying.

    The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum of South Chennai noted that the downgrade, without prior notification, “clearly amounted to a deficiency in service”, the report said.

    It ordered SIA to pay the customer 30,000 rupees (S$630) as compensation for mental agony and hardship, and to pay 5,000 rupees (S$105) for the cost of the proceedings within six weeks, the report said.

     

    Source: www.channelnewsasia.com

  • Alfian Sa’at: Unfortunate That Racial Discourse Framed In Terms Of Sensitivity, But Sharon Au Has Apologise, Let’s Move On

    Alfian Sa’at: Unfortunate That Racial Discourse Framed In Terms Of Sensitivity, But Sharon Au Has Apologise, Let’s Move On

    I don’t know Sharon Au as a friend. But I have met her before, and I remember that we were both enthusing about how much we loved Haresh Sharma’s plays. (Au declared he was her favourite Singaporean playwright.)

    I actually don’t like it when racial discourses are framed in terms of ‘sensitivity’, because the aggrieved parties–often minorities–are then cast as humourless and oversensitive. And that’s really quite wrong, because God knows how minorities have often used laughter to deal with…all the stuff we have to deal with! I’d much rather such comments be flagged as ‘inappropriate’ rather than ‘insensitive’. This is because the discourse on sensitivity vests all the authority in the aggrieved party to define where the line of offence lies and when it has been crossed–unfortunately breeding resentment. But when we describe something as ‘inappropriate’ there is a sense that a whole community (of Singaporeans) takes responsibility for defining what should be the norms in our multicultural society.

    So when Au imitated an Indian accent when she spoke to an Indian member of the audience, was she being ‘insensitive’? Certainly it’s ‘lame’, ‘off-colour’ and even a little ‘tone-deaf’. It could have been funny in a situation, for example, if the girl had a chance to try on a Chinese accent (there’s such a thing, and it has given us choice phrases like ‘SQ me’ and ‘solly solly’ and ‘probrem sums’) as a way of getting back at Au. And this is what I believe happens when friends interact with each other. A close friendship gives you license to poke fun at each other–though you always take cues from the other person, who’ll lead with self-deprecating remarks: “Sorry, I’m very Chinese, I must insist the taxi driver give me my 5 cents change”; “Eh, I bring shame to the Malays lah, I really cannot play soccer”; “I’m very Indian, I cannot wear all this monochrome stuff, I must have at least three colours on me.”

    I think as a very experienced host, Au’s instinct is always to establish rapport with the audience member. But I think she flubbed–and I truly think it is an honest mistake–because she might have assumed that it is the ability to make these racial comments that establishes rapport. This is getting it backwards: you build the rapport first, you gain the other person’s trust, before you get permission to say such things (and you should be able to take as good as you give). I think at the spur of the moment, Au might have looked at that audience member and immediately thought: ‘talk to her in that teasing, jokey way you talk to your Indian friend’. But of course the audience member was a total stranger (in a public setting), and which stranger could take kindly to such remarks?

    Au has apologised, gracefully and sincerely, without attempting to justify what she did (which is more than I can say of those who might claim that they’re being ‘victimised’ by political correctness and that ‘people can’t take a joke anymore’–or worse, say that ‘I have many Indian friends so I can’t be racist’).

    And now on to the rest of the Games!

    (PS: Some people cannot read properly so let me summarise. This isn’t saying ‘she did nothing wrong’. This is saying, ‘she did something wrong and admitted it and made a voluntary apology’. There’s a difference k?)

     

    Source: Alfian Sa’at

  • Ho Kwon Ping: CMIO Categorisation A Hindrance To Cohesion

    Ho Kwon Ping: CMIO Categorisation A Hindrance To Cohesion

    The traditional Chinese-Malay-Indian-Others (CMIO) categorisation should be dropped, so as to maintain cohesiveness in diversity, which is a challenge the Republic has to overcome in order to achieve its dreams in the next 50 years, said prominent businessman Ho Kwon Ping.

    Such rigid categorisation hampers Singapore’s ability to deal with an increasingly vocal and diverse society, where there are multiple identities and more complex sub-ethnicities, he said, citing same-sex couples and intra-ethnic differences between immigrants and locals as examples.

    “Race and class and a consensus on social issues are becoming increasingly complex and intertwined in Singapore,” said Mr Ho, who is executive chairman of Banyan Tree Holdings. He was addressing about 560 people including students, young working professionals and civil servants at his fifth and last lecture as S R Nathan Fellow, organised by the Institute of Policy Studies.

    “The CMIO model … has helped to create common ground among those of different tongues and dialects, but it also has had the effect of oversimplifying the diversity that is our social mix,” he said. “How we define people often shapes how they behave, so the less we pigeonhole people, the more chances we have for a cohesive diversity.”

    Mr Ho cited the example of New York City, where there is no fixed preconception of people. Despite their diversity, all New Yorkers love the city, he noted.

    Similarly, Singaporeans must learn to embrace one another as individuals and not as categories, he said. “Without stereotypical expectations, we can accept and appreciate each person as different, but from whom we can learn new things.”

    Mr Ho identified improving social mobility as another challenge.

    Though a meritocratic system based on academic grades has served Singapore well in the past 50 years, the Republic is “in danger of being a static meritocracy that sieves people based only on a narrow measure of capability within single snapshots of time and, from there-on, creates a self-perpetuating elite class”.

    Citing statistics on the backgrounds of those in prestigious schools and Public Service Commission scholarship recipients, and showing that the majority came from privileged families, Mr Ho said: “Ironically, the original social leveller and purest form of Singapore-style meritocracy — our educational system — may perpetuate intergenerational class stratification, rather than level the playing field.”

    Affirmative action for disadvantaged groups is not a solution, because that would bring about “the start of an unending process of affirmative actions that will only demean and discredit our meritocracy in the long run”, he added.

    While non-graduates can now take on jobs previously open only to graduates, Mr Ho said the Civil Service could do more to take the lead on social levelling.

    For instance, the Administrative Service — the elite among public servants — should change its recruitment criteria, replacing academic pedigree with psychometric and other aptitude tests.

    The third challenge for Singapore to overcome is in building a collaborative, and not paternalistic, governance style, said Mr Ho.

    “However, such a government culture of participatory democracy can work only if the institutions of civil society can be actively engaged in decision-making,” he said, in calling for better access to information for civil society activists.

    During the dialogue after his speech, questions on race and diversity dominated the proceedings. Members of the audience asked whether Singapore would go the way of New York City in becoming a cultural melting pot and whether the Republic was ready for a non-Chinese Prime Minister.

    Mr Ho expressed confidence that a more cohesive diversity would solidify in the coming years.

    Citing the United States as an example, he said questions had also been raised on whether the country was ready for a black president, yet Mr Barack Obama was elected in 2008.

    Meanwhile, Mr Bilahari Kausikan, Ambassador-at Large in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has been appointed as Mr Ho’s successor as S R Nathan Fellow for the Study of Singapore.

     

    Source: www.todayonline.com