Rohingya Refugees exposing the lies of the PAP

Okay, yesterday's article was full of fucking, swearing and name calling - let me try to do another piece in a more calm manner and try to get the heart of the issue of why it is so wrong for the Singaporean authorities to have turned away the Vietnamese vessel carrying 40 Rohingya refugees yesterday. Quite simply, refugees are not economic migrants. There will still be plenty of swearing in this article as normal service has not resumed yet, I'm still in "LIMPEH SIBEH BUAY SONG" (I'm fucking pissed off) mode.

Let's focus on the Rohingya Muslims to begin with. They number approximately 800,000 in Myanmar and are an ethnic minority there - Myanmar is mostly a Buddhist country and as Muslims and an ethnic minority, they have always faced oppression by the regime there. They are effectively stateless - denied Myanmar citizenship despite having always lived in Myanmar. This has something that has been going on for many decades and the world has always focussed on Myanmar's other problems, such as the lack of political freedom and the imprisonment of Aung Sung Suu Kyi.

Given how complex the situation is in Myanmar, the rest of the world has always taken a very simplistic view that is is an oppressive regime vs the people; whilst conveniently ignoring the issue of Rohingya oppression in Myanmar. This current outflow of refugees have been sparked off as a result of the 2012 Rakhine State riots. A Buddhist woman in Rakhine state was raped and murdered - it was suspected that the rapist and murderer might be a Muslim, but the investigations never got that far. Mob violence took over - whole villages were torched, Muslims were raped, tortured and killed by he Buddhists. (So much for Buddhism being a peace loving religion.)

In total, just in 2012 alone, over 100,000 Rohingya Muslims have been displaced because of the torching of Rohingya Muslim villages and figures for deaths are estimated to be about 730 with a further 1200 missing (presumed dead). The Burmese state has done little to quell the violence and neighbouring Bangladesh (a Muslim country at that) has closed its borders to fleeing Rohingya refugees because they are fearing a deluge of refugees crossing over the border and not being able to cope. Thailand has a very similar stance to Bangladesh for the same reason.

The one country that has shown compassion to the plight of the Rohingya is Malaysia. However, this means a very treacherous boat journey in vessels which are not designed for such long journeys to get from Myanmar (or Bangladesh - many refugees have to go via Bangladesh as that is the route the people smugglers use) to Malaysia. These refugees know they are not welcomed in most places - that is why they are risking their lives to get to Malaysia, knowing that if they stayed in Myanmar, they risk being killed by the Buddhists. The boat which these 40 refugees were on originally sank in the Bay of Bengal. About 250 people were packed on the Bangladesh registered vessel 'the Nagu', it was overloaded by greedy people traffickers. Most of the passengers drowned and the survivors spent 30 hours in the sea before being picked up by the Vietnamese vessel 'Nosco Victory'. A further 9 survivors were picked up by another ship the Liberian registered X-Press Hoogly. Amongst these 40 survivors, many of them would have had a family member on that boat who has drowned. They have nothing left on them and are in such a desperate state.

The captain of the ship chose to stay on his course to Singapore, where the ship was headed. The refugees they picked up had no say in where the ship was headed - it was not their decision. It was not like getting a lift from a friend who asks you, "so, where can I drop you off? Where would you like to go now?" The Nosco Victory is a cargo ship - it has to get goods from port A to port B on a schedule and the captain is answerable to his employers when it comes to keeping to a tight schedule, delivering the goods on time.

I ask you for mercy. I ask you to show compassion to those 40 refugees. I ask you to find it in your heart to find some humanity left you Singaporeans - you and your obsession with shopping and eating on Orchard Road, you are willing to spend all that money on yourselves- yet when it comes to showing a bit of mercy to these 40 refugees who came so close to death and have absolutely nothing left, not even their dignity. No, you don't want to help. You're not emotionless, you're simply not human. Any decent human being would have the basic decency, the very basic shred of humanity to want to help people in this situation - this humanity is what makes us humans and not beasts.

But no Singapore, you're beasts. You're not human. You have no humanity. You lack the very basic humanity which defines us as a civilized society - yes you have sky scrapers and shopping malls, you have Orchard Road and Marina Bay Sands but you don't even have basic humanity. That's fucking tragic. Money can't buy you humanity, it is a trait you are born with but somehow, the PAP has managed to genetically engineer a generation of Singaporeans who lack that basic humanity and support their heartless stance on these 40 refugees.

I want to clarify two misconceptions about refugees. Firstly, it is often the poorest countries in the world (not the richest) who take on the greatest burdens when it comes to refugees. It's crazy to think that the poorest countries are taking such a big share of the burden whilst richer countries stand back and do nothing - it's a shocking lack of humanity. Take a recent crisis in Africa -the war in Darfur, in the west of Sudan. This is a war that started in 2003 February and is still going on today. The vast majority of the refugees displaced as a result of the war in Darfur went to neighbouring African countries like Chad, Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya. Only a very small number with the resources to escape managed to find their way to richer countries in the West - many were only able to get as far as they could be foot to neighbouring countries. Now countries like Chad and Ethiopia are amongst the poorest in the world - yet they have the humanity to show mercy and compassion to these refugees who show up at their borders, fleeing war and death in their own country. It takes a lot of money to buy a plane ticket or pay a human smuggler to get a refugee to a rich country like Australia or America - it is simply not an option open to the majority of refugees. These African countries are capable of showing such compassion and humanity - they truly put Singapore to shame!

Secondly, many refugees are not uneducated people who will become a burden on the host nation. In act, many are educated, have productive jobs and want nothing more than to be able to get a job, work hard and get some kind of normality back to their lives in their new country. They are not expecting hand outs, they are not expecting sympathy - they just want a chance to settle in a new country, where they can start a new life in peace. Many of them are indeed professionals who do bring with them plenty of skills that will enable them to become economically productive within a short period of resettling in a new country. Remember, these are people forced to flee their countries because of a very real threat to their lives - these are not economic migrants looking for a better future. By that token, yes there are some extremely highly educated and talented refugees - Charles Saatchi, Anish Kapoor, Lucian Freud, Michael Marks (founder of Marks & Spencers), Gloria Estefan, Mika, Wyclef Jean, Freddie Mercury, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Anne Frank, Joseph Conrad, Omid Djalili - need I go on?

These Rohingya Muslims were not shopping around for a nice country to go to - they are not foreign workers who are working in Singapore as bus driver, maids or construction workers. They are not coming to Singapore to steal your jobs you insecure Singaporean. These are desperate people who have come so close to death so many times and are desperate to stay alive. Can you tell the difference between a refugee and a foreign worker?

It is bad enough when so many idiotic Singaporeans are too stupid realize that the only reason there are too many foreign workers in Singapore is because the PAP keeps importing more - yet you people keep voting for the PAP? You keep voting for the PAP, you will keep on getting more foreign workers. You don't want more foreign workers - then don't vote for the PAP! But regardless of your political affiliation, we're all human and have a collective responsibility to show humanity, compassion and mercy to other human beings. This compassion shouldn't depend on your ethnicity, religion, political affiliation, nationality or anything at all - it should depend solely on your humanity.

Instead of directing your anger at the PAP, you want to direct you anger not just at foreign workers but these 40 Rohingya refugees? Fucking hell, I say, I hope people like Sharon Chia, Leon Chow, John Chen, Justin Tang, Frankie Png, Pow Liang Wei and Siow Jia Rui - yes the lot of you, I hope you get hounded from your homes, see all your family members raped and killed before your very eyes, be forced to flee your country in a pathetic wooden boat, only to be stranded in international waters for another country to tell you, "Fuck off we're a small country, go away, we're full, we're not obliged to help you. I don't care if you die."

Direct your anger at them, not the 40 Rohingya refugees!

Here's the bit which pisses me off the most. The PAP are a bunch of fucking liars. I know that and I hope you my readers, realize that. But the bulk of Singaporeans are indeed stupid enough to believe their lies - WTF. So much for your supposedly great education system, you're just a bunch of gullible fools at the end of the day. Back in the 1970s, during the Vietnam war, Singapore used the excuse, "Oh we're a very small country, we're a tiny island, we can't cope with more people." That was their excuse to refuse Vietnamese refugees and turn away boats full of Vietnamese refugees the moment they entered Singaporean waters. The population of Singapore was just 2.25 million in 1975, when the Vietnam war ended. Was Singapore already full with 2.25 million people?!

What's this you said about Singapore being a very small country that cannot cope with more people? In 2000, the population reached 4 million and guess what the PAP did? Enough people? Hell no, the PAP wants 6.5 million and went into importing overdrive, actively recruiting foreign workers from China to come and work in Singapore. People such as the infamous Sun Xu, the scholar from China who thinks that there are more dogs than humans in Singapore. Singapore is still granting about 80,000 PRs a year and 18,500 new citizens a year. No space? Then why are you rolling out the red carpet for all these foreigners then? More than a third of Singaporeans today are foreign born. There are about 1 million Chinese nationals (PRCs) living in Singapore currently.

So, PAP - what's this you said about Singapore being a small country with not enough space for any refugees? Not even a few thousands from Vietnam or Myanmar? Yet somehow, you've managed to find space for a million PRCs. You're lying. I've come to expect nothing less from PAP - they are a bunch of corrupt liars. But for Singaporeans to be too stupid or blind to look at the statistics and figure out - wait a minute, the numbers don't quite add up here, what the fuck is going on... If you have no space for Vietnamese refugees in 1975 when we had 2.25 million people and we have no space for 40 Rohingya refugees in 2012 when we're trying to reach 6.5 million people... aren't the PAP just a bunch of fucking liars? My question is: why are 60.14% Singaporeans so blind to that fact?

In any case, the PAP have always been in bed with the military junta of Burma/Myanmar. Whilst the rest of the world had imposed economic sanctions on Burma/Myanmar as a response to their appalling human rights situation, the PAP were happily doing business with the military junta - the very government who are turning a blind eye to the genocide of the Rohingyas. Heck, the PAP doesn't give a shit about human rights - given the appalling track record for human rights in Singapore, the PAP are the last people to preach to you about human rights.

Yup, the PAP are not going to nag at you about Myanmar's human rights record

I say bravo to the PAP. It's a triumph of social engineering that would've impressed Stalin, Mao, Kim Jong-Il and Hitler. You've somehow managed to create a generation of Singaporeans who are productive and supposedly well-educated but are still somehow so brainwashed that they are blind to all your lies and hypocrisy. It's a potent mix of making sure that Singaporeans are insecure, immature, lacking in confidence and most of all, stripped of their basic humanity. Bravo PAP. I'm sure your success has even exceed your own expectations. One such brainwashed Singapore is Siow Jia Rui who wrote on Facebook:

Siow Jia Rui there is no reason for Singapore to accept these refugees. Larger countries like Australia or Malaysia have consistently turned away boatloads of refugees. The government cannot even take care of the needs of Singaporeans, what more refugees?

Oh Jia Rui - how brainwashed you are. The government doesn't want to take care of the needs of Singaporeans - it's not being willing to do something is not the same as not being able to do something. The Singaporean government is so rich and has all the money in the world to pay itself such ridiculously high salaries - heck, Obama isn't even as well paid as some of Singapore's politicians. The money is there - the will, however, isn't. Jia Rui, would you rather believe that your government wants to but can't help you -  than to face the truth, which is the PAP doesn't really give a shit about ordinary Singaporeans who have little to offer. Are those the crazy lies you need to tell yourself Jia Rui, just so you can sleep at night without feeling well and truly fucked by the PAP?

Lastly, I know people in Singapore are talking about Palmergate - I really don't give a shit. So he had a mistress and fucked a woman who's not his wife. It's a private matter between him and his family and he has a lot of explaining to do to his wife and child. But at the end of the day, no one died, no one was raped, no homes were burnt to the grown, no one was made homeless and hounded out of his/her home as a result. I couldn't be less interested in Palmergate for that reason - that is why I want to write about the plight of the Rohingyas instead. Let's focus on what is important, please. As usual, please feel free to leave a comment below and share your thoughts on the issue.