Singapore cannot be laissez-faire with race and religion issues, says Home Minister


Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam said Singapore intervenes heavily to ensure social cohesion. - ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO

SINGAPORE (The Straits Times/ANN): Issues of race and religion cannot be dealt with by taking a laissez-faire, race-blind approach, said Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam on July 1, adding that Singapore intervenes heavily to ensure social cohesion and has “a tough set of laws” to deal with the minority who choose to be nasty towards people with different characteristics.

In a world fraught with racial and religious tensions, the Republic – despite its status as one of the most religiously diverse places in the world – is an outlier not by chance, and the peace and harmony found here have to be attributed to its near-zero tolerance for hate and offensive speech, he noted.

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