I think that the government of Singapore should use both ways as expressed in the two different articles. The government should allow freedom of speech to a certain extent only and encourage its citizens to exercise their social responsibility through educating its people.
Freedom of expression is rather essential to democracy but there should be a limit to freedom of expression. Would you like if someone from another race or religion insults your race or religion? If you cannot accept that people do so, you should not be insulting or commenting on other races or religion. But that does not mean that if you do not mind about people commenting on your religious ways you can go around insulting other people’s as one must stand in other people’s shoes and understand other people’s feelings. In a multi racial country like Singapore its citizens must be sensitive to the other religions and races of the country. We must bare in mind it is due to such “freedom of expression” where members of the UMNO were allowed to run communal campaigns thus leading in the1964 racial riots in Singapore due to conflicts and resentment agitated by Syed Jaafar Albar. Therefore we must keep in mind that it is important respect other people’s race.
Although freedom of expression is essential to democracy it is important that one must exercise social responsibility and not indiscriminately commenting on other religions cultural beliefs. Exercising social responsibility is very important and this shows how mature one is, in his thinking. Newspaper may have the right to freedom of speech that does not mean that the journalist can write and comment on the other races. Just like what I said previously, it all boils down to the problem of if one can exercise social responsibility and know what should be said and printed and what should not be. There is a difference between having the right and it being socially and morally right to do it. Just like the press may have the right to comment on other races but if the press does so it may be against their moral values. Thus there is a need to know how to strike a balance between individual and collective press freedom rights. This can be done through the people exercising social responsibility and knowing how to limit ones comments and on the other hand the people at the receiving end of the comments must have a broad mind and accept that other people can comment on whatever they like. What’s important is that one has to believe in your own religion and that will be enough and not bothering about what people say.
What I think is the problem with Singaporeans is that many of us think that they have the right to comment on other people’s beliefs or cultural customs but does not allow other people to comment on the religion or god they belief in thus creating a huge problem. I have personally met people who are complete racist where they will joke about other people’s races insult their customs and even do name calling on those of a particular race and they seem to enjoy it so much and are completely oblivious that the ones who are at the receiving end of it is either feeling uncomfortable or unhappy. However when the ones at the receiving end of it decides to play along and insults the racist’s race, he would flare up and start shouting profanities and may even resort to violence!
In a multi racial country like Singapore one must learn how to respect one another’s religion and being sensitive to their beliefs thus the government should allow freedom of speech to a limited extent and also educate the public on social responsibility. This enables the country to be free from racial riots and racial unrest as such activities may cause the economy of that country to stop growing. Who would one to leave in a country that is full of social unrest and violence? For everyone’s benefit to live in a peaceful country everyone must play a part in maintaining peace by respecting one another’s religion and be sensitive to each other’s belief.
