Riot Recollections
That Fateful Night
8 December 2013 was a night that was to be etched in our memories. For most Singaporeans, the reaction was one of incredulity and shock. It seemed almost surreal.
There was a session at the Singapore Writer’s Festival 2015 featuring Zakaria Zainal and Prabhu Silvam. Their names did not register but the title of their photo journal did – ” Riot Recollections.”. Yes, who can forget!
At the end of the one-hour session, I had to buy the book and get it autographed, touched by the sincere efforts of these two young men who endeavored to bring to the forefront people who would otherwise be invisible, to give them a face and a voice.
There are 30 faces and voices in this book. They were the man in the street, shopkeepers, residents and foreign workers. Many more were approached but declined. They chose to remain invisible and anonymous, for reasons of their own.
In 1969, our parents and grandparents experienced race riots. This book is a compilation of first-person narratives from different locations in Little India, from the main roads to the back alleys. ” We want to reveal the myriad of mini-narratives from the ground. A visual vox populi, if you like….Behind these stories, these individuals, too, reveal their hopes and aspirations for a better SIngapore. So that such an incident may never happen again…”
” Go ahead and make this book,” one of them said.
” These stories need to be told.”
– Yeo Eng Meng, 63, shop owner
Chia Boon Juay, undergraduate, eye-witness
Migrant Workers ( Epilogue by Braema Mathi , President, MARUAH )
” Today, SIngapore depends on foreign workers who work in construction, shipyards, domestic work and in other semi-skilled jobs. There are almost a million of such workers in Singapore…
Like our forefathers, foreign workers, too, prefer to stomach difficult conditions, even when they know that they are being exploited, as they just want to focus on sending money home or saving to secure a better future for them and their families.
They also put up often with our stigmatisation of workers through our attitudes…
The riot in Race Course Road is a sad event. It should not have happened. Yet we know that it was a matter of time before a keg were to blow off. And it did happen…
WE have heard often the many stories of our foreign workers. We hope that this effort by Prabhu and Zakaria will show the everyday-ness in how we connect with each other, relate to each other and how foreign workers and Singaporeans have a shared destiny in whcin there should only be space for mutual respect for each other”
How then shall we move forward?
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