Singapore blocks posts targeting Indian community, says content likely from China-based platform

The Singaporean government on Saturday ordered social media platforms to block 14 posts that target the Indian community.

The posts had made claims such as that the island nation was being overrun by Indians.

The Singaporean home ministry said that the content “likely originated from a China-based platform” and was carried by other websites.

The ministry said in a statement that the narratives had started circulating online “in the Chinese information space” in May that Singapore was displaying anxiety about its cultural identity and ethnic politics.

The posts used “derogatory and demeaning language” to refer to the Indian community, it said.

The posts also selectively used images and footage of crowded streets in Singapore’s Little India area and of Indian devotees at a religious festival at Pagoda Street to claim that the country was being “overcrowded” with Indians, the ministry added.

The content undermined Singapore’s “model of multiculturalism”, the government said.

“Singapore firmly opposes nativism and xenophobia,” it said. “Any attempt to pit one community against another here must be firmly rejected. These attacks coming from a foreign source are doubly unacceptable.”

The government said that it had taken a “serious view of threats” to Singapore’s social cohesion and racial harmony, “including from external actors, and will act resolutely against them”. It urged citizens to be discerning when...

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