Little India riots: One year on

Bridging the gap

About 11 months ago, the distance from Ms Jena Peh's Redhill home to Tuas was a daunting trek.

The 45-year-old financial adviser for an insurance firm had signed up as a volunteer for Happy Happy English, a programme to help foreign workers learn and improve their spoken English.

The classes, held on Saturdays, are conducted in the dormitories where the workers live.

"It does take a bit of courage to step into the dormitory," said Ms Peh, who is accompanied by other volunteers and surrounded by mostly foreign men in an unfamiliar environment.

But now, the facilitator looks forward to seeing familiar faces each week, helping the teacher to facilitate the classes and playing games with the workers - many of whom have become her friends.

"Because of the relationships, the feeling of the long distance has become shorter," she said. 

Happy Happy English is the brainchild of Dr Paul Choo, a retired doctor who founded Shenton Medical Group.

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Disturbed by the Little India riot a year ago, Dr Choo wanted to find a way to bridge the communication gap between Singaporeans and foreign workers, and address prejudices on both sides.

What better way than to teach conversational English to foreign workers through entertaining, educational and interactive ways, such as games?

Many of them, especially India workers, already speak English.

Dr Choo said the aim is to let them understand the way we speak and to build their confidence in speaking English to us, so that both sides can communicate better.

The first classes started in Tuas about a month after the riot. The programme later expanded to Toh Guan and Mandai.

About 150 foreign workers have voluntarily gone through the free programme, which has about 150 volunteers - from working professionals and retirees to university students - on the database, Dr Choo said.

The volunteers know about the programme through word of mouth and networking sessions. Not all volunteers are teachers.

The classes usually last for about 12 weeks, with a week's break in between. Each session lasts for two hours, from 8pm to 10pm.

Ms Tay Shi Hui, 26, who works in an IT company and volunteers as a teacher in a dormitory in Mandai, said that until she started volunteering in the programme, she had been indifferent to the workers.

Now when she walks by a construction site, she would find herself peering discreetly to see if she can find familiar faces from her class, so that she can say hi.

MUTUAL APPRECIATION

She also appreciates the foreign workers here more, adding that the apartment she lives in and the road she walks on could be built by them.

The affection is mutual.

One of her Bangladeshi students, Mr Sohanur Rahman, 25, calls Ms Tay, "my sister".

Sitting with her over lunch yesterday, he hooked his index fingers together and said "kasha kashi", which means "very near" in Bengali, to emphasise their bond.

It is no wonder. Ms Tay had gone out of her way to help Mr Sohanur, who works as a painter. He aspires to be a hotel manager, and Ms Tay helped him research the relevant courses.

About two weeks ago, she visited him at his worksite with another friend to help him examine a computer he wanted to buy to ensure he would not get ripped off.

After that, they went to a nearby coffee shop to "talk about life and discuss our religions, reality and dreams", Mr Sohanur said.

Mr Sohanur recalled his loneliness when he first came to Singapore last December, a day after Christmas.

"I feel alone. I miss my parents. I miss my friends."

When he joined Happy Happy English in September, Ms Tay was the first to greet and welcome him. "Sister is my first Singaporean friend," Mr Rahman said.

Through the programme, Ms Magdalene Tan, 56, a senior manager for business development at Make Health Connect and a volunteer teacher in Mandai, said she gets to know the workers as people.

"They are not just a group of workers on the buses, or on the train," Ms Tan said. "They now have faces. They have problems, pain and joys - just like us."

 'We tend to forget they too have feelings'

As part of a campaign to show that low-wage migrant workers are "real people", a group of students uploaded a video last month of Singaporeans commenting on how they feel about foreign workers here.

Among the comments: "We Singaporeans know how to behave when we drink and these foreigners don't know how to behave," said one woman.

Another said "having them around would make the crime rate go up".

These communication students from Nanyang Technological University then showed various foreigners these clips of Singaporeans' unhappiness with them and recorded their reactions.

One Bangladeshi man said he was not happy that Singaporeans were saying negative things about foreign workers.

Others were forced to shrug these comments off, claiming they experienced this regularly.

The New Paper uploaded the video on our website last Wednesday, and netizens left more than 100 comments on our Facebook page as well as on the video's YouTube page. Not all were positive and encouraging.

Miss Noreen Mohammad, 22, the producer of the video, said: "We were surprised that about half of the comments were negative." Filipino domestic worker Elvira Ordonez was not surprised when she read the negative comments on the video.

Ms Ordonez, 36, who was featured in the video, recounted an incident in which a Singaporean woman stole her cab while queueing . The woman told her: "You're foreigner, I'm Singaporean."

Ms Ordonez, who has been working here for 13 years, said: "We feel very bad because they don't realise how hurtful it is."

Some comments said these foreign workers "got what they deserved" while others highlighted that Singaporeans are unhappy with "foreign talent and not these low-wage migrant workers".

But Miss Noreen said: "Whether it's higher-earning foreign talents or migrant workers, Singaporeans are still exhibiting xenophobic tendencies."

Her group mate, Miss Claire Chin, 22, said: "Singaporeans tend to view them as an economic component and as transient workers. More often than not, we tend to forget they too have feelings."

HOPE TO CHANGE

And this is what she and her three group members hope to change.

Exactly one year ago, the Little India riot threw a harsh spotlight on the South Asian foreign workers. The negativity towards them was more prominent than before - especially online.

So as part of their final-year project, the students came up with a campaign, AnOther Angle Sg, to educate Singaporeans with the overall goal of decreasing xenophobic sentiment here.

The group aims to bring together migrant workers and Singaporeans by conducting a "sports exchange".

Open to the public, the girls got a team of Kabaddi players, who are mostly Indian foreign workers.

Kabaddi is a contact sport that is usually played in India and Bangladesh.

They are also in the midst of getting a Singaporean football team.

Little India, big changes

Workers, shopkeepers and residents talk about how life has changed for them since the riot.

WORKERS: IT'S NOT AS JOLLY ANY MORE

On a rainy Sunday much like yesterday, Little India was irrevocably changed.

A year after Singapore's first riot in four decades on Dec 8 last year, that little pocket of Singapore which turns into an enclave for South Asian workers during the weekend has become cleaner, brighter, and perhaps, more sober, in more ways than one.

When The New Paper visited yesterday, several workers told us that it is "no longer as jolly", and some even try to stay away.

Mr Aarumugam Ravi, 45, who has been working here for 17 years, said he no longer visits Little India as often as he used to.

"After the riot, it's not as jolly as it used to be. Too many rules and policemen around," he told TNP in Tamil, adding he used to meet friends there every week, have a few drinks and unwind. "Now, it feels very tense," he said.

As we speak to him near Chander Road, Special Operations Command (SOC) vehicles can be seen in the background.

By the bus station at the junction of Race Course Road and Tekka Lane, half a dozen police officers - including those from the SOC - keep watch.

Mr Aarumugam was on his monthly visit to Little India with his cousin, Mr Muthu Illaiyappan, 44. The pair were there to remit money and buy groceries.

First Sundays of the month are traditionally busy times for the remitters because it is when workers want to send money home.

But with more remitters setting up shop in worker dormitories, the crowd at Little India has also thinned.

Also contributing to the thinning crowd: the alcohol ban.

Measures put in place mean that drinking in public is forbidden - coffee shops, restaurants and bars have to ensure the drinks are consumed within their premises.

Liquor stores, which used to do a roaring trade on weekends, now have to stop selling at 8pm.

Not that it makes a difference: their customers have nowhere to drink.

Then there are those like Mr U. Mohan, who keeps away to stay out of trouble.

The technician, who has been working here for eight years, told TNP in Tamil: "I don't really want to come here because I'm worried of getting into trouble."

"I'm scared that if I'm here, and something bad happens, something might happen to me too," he said.

As we were leaving, we spotted Mr R. Murugan (inset), 38.

The construction worker said the stricter regulations have been a long time coming.

"We shouldn't be drinking in public, it's wrong," he said in Tamil.

Mr Murugan added: "We come from another country, and we are staying here. If we do things (that go against the law), Singaporeans wouldn't accept us."

SHOPKEEPERS: WE'RE SUFFERING

He has only three months to turn things around, Mr Sadhasivam Kailasam said.

Barely nine months after he put $100,000 into opening his liquor store on Chander Road in March 2013, the Dec 8 riots happened.

After the new regulations kicked in, Mr Sadhasivam said his business has gone down by "almost 99 per cent".

"Last time, I could sell at least 10 cartons (of 24 cans) each of (Haywards) 5000, Kingfisher and Knockout beer every weekend. Now, I'm happy if I sell one carton each," he said.

The 42-year-old said customers have nowhere to drink in the area, and usually take the liquor back to their dormitories.

"But in the dormitory, they have shops there selling too, so why should they buy here?"

Since January, he has put in another $20,000 to keep his business afloat, even borrowing from banks.

"Maybe the Government should have something like a beer garden where people can drink, so people like me won't go out of business," he added.

Further down Chander Road at Yeo Ban Heng, owner David Yeo is slightly more optimistic.

The 59-year-old said that while retail business has gone down by more than half, the pay off has been worth it.

"This area has cleaned up a lot. Now we don't get vomit outside our shops every Monday, and there are fewer fights," he said.

Yeo Ban Heng is also an alcohol wholesaler, which helps pay the bills, Mr Yeo said.

Moreover, the shophouse is family-owned, which means there is no rent to worry about.

Asked if he thinks the new measures have been too harsh, he likened it to taking medication: "When you're sick, you need strong medicine to cure your illness."

RESIDENTS: KEEP IT THIS WAY

In a phone interview with The New Paper, former chairman of the Tekka Residents Committee, Mr Martin Pereira, said Little India's residents want the new regulations to continue.

The Public Order (Additional Temporary Measures) Act, which bans alcohol consumption in the area during weekends, public holidays and the eve of public holidays, will expire in March next year.

"We want to see it continue even after it expires," Mr Pereira said, adding that residents even want the drinking ban to start on Friday mornings instead of Saturday.

Previously, the authorities thought a light touch in Little India would have been sufficient, and that was tolerated by the residents, Mr Pereira said, but that was "not reciprocated by the foreign workers".

"While the wound (caused by the riot) has healed, the scars are still there," he said.

Asked if the measures have been too draconian, he demurred.

"To those who say the authorities have gone overboard, I say: 'You don't live here, you don't know the extent of our problems'," he said.

tnp@sph.com.sg

djenn@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on Dec 8, 2014.
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