Rage
in "safe" Singapore
Lee Yuet
Kong, a taxi driver, was charged in court this week with "causing
grievous hurt", for driving his vehicle into Alex Lim Wee Chong,
who is now in a coma. [1]
Alex Lim's car and the
taxi had a small collision along Paterson Road on 9 April 2007. A
little ahead, at Scotts Road, both of them pulled over as is normal
practice, to exchange drivers' identification. An argument broke
out and Lee, the taxi driver, refused to provide Lim with his
details. He got back into his cab intending to drive off. Lim tried
to stop him by positioning himself in front of the
taxi.
Lee
drove straight into Lim, throwing the latter onto the bonnet. Then
he stopped suddenly, throwing Lim forward onto the road. Not only
did Lim's girlfriend witness this, apparently so did a passenger in
Lee's taxi.
Alex
Lim, aged 30, and a financial advisor, has been in a coma since.
He's had a part of his brain removed.
* * * *
*
In the early hours of last Monday, just outside a Clarke Quay bar,
an off-duty bar manager (from a different bar) was attacked. Eugene
Chua was so brutally beaten he died in hospital 2 days later.
Exactly who did this and why has not been revealed but the police
have arrested 2 persons in connection with the crime, and are investigating.
[2]
By all
accounts, Eugene Chua was very much liked. His boss described him
as "a small, spunky, affable and hardworking guy", and his
premature death at age 32 was deeply mourned.
24 hours
prior to that savage incident, six teenagers were attacked by 16
young men near the Esplanade. The six claimed that the fight, which
included vulgarities and racial taunts, was unprovoked. One of the
six, Chan Voon Ho, aged 17, was so badly beaten that he suffered
multiple fractures on his face and lost nearly all his front teeth.[3]
The
police are now looking for the 16 other guys. Whether it will be
classified as causing grievous hurt, rioting or some other offence
is too early to say.
Then we
have stories of schoolgirls engaging in "happy slapping", a form of
bullying, where a group gangs up on a victim, strip and beat her
and record everything on video to be uploaded onto the internet.
Such brazen behaviour, I can hardly imagine.
* * * *
*
For some years now, I have been disturbed by how quickly
Singaporeans resort to violence. Bar fights are common, as is road
rage, but even if you're nowhere near a bar or on the road, you can
still be beaten to pulp just by looking at the wrong person.
"Staring" incidents, a marker of immaturity, can escalate into
running battles within minutes.
Staring
comes out of an animalistic instinct, where one party uses his eyes
to establish his social rank over the other. The one who turns away
first concedes.
In young
men, with their testosterone impulses, self-control is already
lower than other age groups, but when we stir in low self-esteem,
then the challenge is perceived even more acutely. All the more,
the staring party, whether initiator or responder, cannot afford to
back down. That is why staring incidents leading to fights are
typically reported among the less educated or the less economically
well-off.
That
being the case, a widening income gap and increasing financial
stress for the lower half of society does not bode well at
all.
Road
rage, on the other hand, involves the better off and the
well-educated too. We sometimes hear of people driving Mercedes
Benzes getting into a scuffle after an accident. No social class is
immune.
I just
wonder if we are increasingly stressed out. Frustrated with working
long hours at the office, or no job at all. Or lousy pay while the
bosses award themselves huge bonuses. Congestion and crowding as we
go from one place to another. Noise all around us even when we
reach home, because the damn town council keeps giving out getai [4] permits....
Others
would put the blame on screen and TV violence. Exactly how media
portrayal of violence affects social tendency to violence is not
fully established, but it should be no surprise if there is a
relationship to some degree. Even indirectly, as in audiences
imbibing attitudes regarding fighting for one's sense of honour, or
group loyalty right or wrong, can have an effect.
I have
long thought that Singapore over-regulates the depiction of sex and
sexuality, and under-regulates the depiction of violence. Sure,
people can be influenced by the depiction of sexual lives to adopt
different sexual values, but rarely are there victims arising from
those new sexual values. On the other hand, violence produces
victims, almost by definition.
Moreover, I see
instances where our justice system tends to be too lenient on
violence too. In an earlier article The pimp and the cabby, I
pointed out two court cases that occurred at the same
time.
In one,
a taxi driver tried to run down a pedestrian. Twice. He was given a
sentence of 4 months' imprisonment.
In the
other, a pimp was sentenced to 4 years in jail, twelve times longer
than the taxi driver, someone whose actions could have killed
another person. There was no suggestion that the pimp used coercion
of any kind to run his business. His "boys" were willing sellers --
that's typical for male prostitution, unlike female prostitution
where the power relationship is often unequal -- and his buyers
were willing buyers. In other words, there were really no
victims.
Besides the question of
whether such a disparity in penalties strikes anyone as reasonable,
there is also the question of why the police are devoting resources
to chasing after victimless crimes.
Yet
righting the balance in law enforcement, needed though it is, is
certainly not the whole answer. We have to identify and address the
social causes. They will be many and complicated. First though, we
must understand that violence is a symptom of social breakdown,
when people feel hopeless or powerless, or just so frustrated with
a zillion other things in their lives, they lose control at a
snap. 
©
Yawning Bread
I wondered what is going wrong with these people very
lately?
