Sharing Our Experience

[wkwoods]

Antonio,

Societies tend to be politically correct on racism until something like terrorism happens. Then all that political correctness is thrown out the window. Classic example is when Tim McVeigh blew up the Federal building in Oklahoma, the FBI pulled all Arab looking passengers off planes leaving Chicago.

Singapore has a delicate balance being a majority Chinese state surrounded by Muslim countries, similar to Israel, and has always taken racial relations very seriously as racial riots could provoke neighbours to invade. That's also why NS is so important to the country. It may be small, but invading it may decimate your cities and infrastructure even if you prevail.

Even in Europe, Sweden is one of the most monoethnic with over 90% Swede and Finn, so a Swede is not in a good position to understand the balancing act required in Singapore and shouldn't be so judgemental. Sweden also has peaceful neighbours. It's easy to judge others when you yourself are not under threat. Even other Europeans are changing - the French are already fearful of being islamisized and ban headscarfs, while Britain and Italy keeps a close eye on their muslim communities after the bus and train bombings.

[wkwoods]

Googling around, I was amazed to find this!

Simon Wiesenthal Center to Issue Travel Advisory for Sweden - Officials Confer With Swedish Justice Minister Beatrice Ask
Stockholm, December 14th 2010

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish Human Rights NGO, has announced it is issuing a travel advisory concerning Sweden due to harassment of Jewish citizens in the southern city of Malmo, the third largest city in Sweden. The decision was conveyed to Swedish Justice Minister Beatrice Ask, by Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate Dean of the Center and Dr. Shimon Samuels, Director of International Relations, during a wide-ranging meeting in Stockholm, earlier today.

“We reluctantly are issuing this advisory because religious Jews and other members of the Jewish community there have been subject to anti-Semitic taunts and harassment. There have been dozens of incidents reported to the authorities but have not resulted in arrests or convictions for hate crimes”