In Parliament, Teo Chee Hean and Sylvia Lim crossed swords on the issue of police training.
Addressing the adequacy of the training methods following the Little India riot in which the police came up short in the way they had handled the crowd, Sylvia Lim had suggested that peaceful protests be legalized as part of civil liberties, with secondary benefit of according the police real training ground on how to handle mass assembly events.
Teo’s response in return typified the PAP’s approach to governance in the past 50 years.
Conjuring up an image of chaos to instill fear, he ignored Sylvia’s point on “peaceful protests”and said:
“I don’t think many Singaporeans would want to see more chaos, demonstrations on the street disrupting their daily lives and also taking up resources which can be used for other purposes.”
As for what these “other purposes” are, he cited that “one of the reasons why I want to increase the size of the SOC is because we have a lot of events in Singapore.”
So Teo Chee Hean, the police is there to marshal crowds in large scale events like the Stanchart Marathon?
If this is the case, doesn’t this defeat the purpose of the Little India Riot COI’s call for ensure the police are well trained to handle incidents of similar nature to the Little India Riot?
Throwing a large number of police officers at a protest that has gone unruly is not going to work, Mr Teo.
After all, Mr Teo, didn’t you read the COI’s finding that culture and psychology of the crowd at that point in time after the accident was a key factor in causing the riot to spiral out of control.
The Alternative View
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