SINGAPORE: Local rapper Subhas Nair, 31, went on trial on Tuesday (Mar 21) over attempting to promote ill will among racial and religious groups through a video and comments on social media.
Nair, whose full name is Subhas Govin Prabhakar Nair, is contesting four charges, arising from incidents between July 2019 and March 2021.
In the first incident, he posted a YouTube video where he and his sister Preeti Nair performed a remixed song containing the lyrics: “Chinese people always out here f***ing it up”.
For this, Nair was given a two-year conditional warning by the police. The warning indicated that if he reoffended, he could be prosecuted for this incident on top of any fresh offences.
In the second incident, he posted on Instagram saying: “If two Malay Muslims made a video promoting Islam and saying the kinds of hateful things these Chinese Christians said, ISD would have been at the door before they even hit ‘upload’.”
He was referring to a viral video by two Christians who linked the gay pride movement to Satan.
In the third incident, Nair posted on Instagram saying that “calling out racism and Chinese privilege” equalled a two-year conditional warning and “smear campaign in the media”, while “actually conspiring to murder an Indian man” equalled half the sentence and the question “you’re having a baby soon right? Boy or girl” from the media.
“Do you actually think a brown person would get asked these type of questions? This place is just not for us,” he wrote.
This was in response to the case of Chan Jia Xing, who was given a conditional warning for a reduced charge of consorting with a person who had a weapon. He was one of the seven originally charged with murdering a man at Orchard Towers.
In the fourth incident, Nair displayed a cartoon during a stage play at The Substation repeating the same words pertaining to Chan Jia Xing.
THE PROSECUTION’S CASE
Since Nair does not dispute saying those words in the charges, Deputy Public Prosecutors Suhas Malhotra and Jordon Li said the trial was about whether Nair had attempted to promote feelings of ill will between racial or religious groups, and whether Nair knew that his words would have this effect.
They called two investigation officers to the stand, who testified about the statements they had taken from Nair.
The prosecution said in their opening statement that “there is no denying that racism exists in Singapore”, and that ordinary citizens are entitled to comment and criticise racist behaviour.
“However, it is crucial that matters touching upon race or religion are dealt with maturely and sensitively, especially on social media, on which a single post can be disseminated to thousands of people in the blink of an eye,” said Mr Malhotra.
He said that Nair posted inflammatory comments on race and religion on multiple occasions, including after he had been investigated and given a conditional warning.
NAIR TAKES THE STAND
Nair took the stand for the defence and explained his intentions behind each post. He said it was not his intention to promote ill will between racial or religious groups.
For the YouTube video containing the lyrics “Chinese people always out here f***ing it up”, he said the aim of the video was to end “brownface” in Singapore.
This refers to the practice of a lighter-skinned person applying make-up to imitate the appearance of a person from an ethnicity with darker skin.
Specifically, the video was made in reaction to an electronic payment advertisement where actor Dennis Chew portrayed four characters including a Malay woman and an Indian man.
Nair said this was not the first time there were racist brownface caricatures by members of Singapore’s Chinese community.
He said the term “f***ing it up”, in the context of the sentence, does not mean that Chinese people are “f***ed up”.
“Rather, an ‘f up’ in this context means a mistake, something that was done that was wrong, and brownface in my opinion is categorically wrong and racist,” he said.
“When I say ‘Chinese people always f-ing it up’, it’s that this is a mistake, this is wrong and this is not the first time it has happened.”
He said he specifically referred to Chinese people because he wanted to be specific about the kind of racism he was seeing.
He intended to “call out the racist Chinese folks who think that this is OK”, but at the same time “call in Chinese allies” so that the Chinese community would call such racist behaviour to account.
Nair said that he did not think at the time of posting that people would take offence.
“As with any kind of art that is put out, there are people who may be offended by that piece of work, especially work that is trying to improve society,” said Nair.
“It can make some people feel uncomfortable, and it might make some racist people feel incredibly offended, so I understand that some people feel offended, but the intention is not to offend, it’s to end brownface in Singapore.”
He said that the video “reveals cracks” that already existed in Singapore, but that since the video was posted, there “has not been an instance of brownface in Singapore”.
“So while people may have got offended, we have moved forward as a society,” said Nair.
NAIR ON ALLEGED MEDIA BIAS
He also addressed his comments on the Orchard Towers case. He had written that “calling out racism and Chinese privilege” equalled a two-year conditional warning and “smear campaign in the media”, while “actually conspiring to murder an Indian man” equalled half the sentence and the question “you’re having a baby soon right? Boy or girl” from the media.
He said he was not trying to create enmity between groups.
Instead, he was trying to convey a message “about the state of journalism in our country”, about “media bias and how certain people and cases were reported”.
Asked by his lawyer Suang Wijaya to elaborate on what he meant by “media bias”, Nair said he was referring to the “treatment” he faced while the media was reporting about the charge he faced over the YouTube video.
“My sister and I felt very personally villified in the media. While on the other hand the gentleman in question (Chan Jia Xing) was asked questions that highlighted his humanity, that were positive and favourable and this was quite jarring to me,” he said.
He said there were “quite a few headlines that seemed to prejudge us” and used “very unglamorous photos of us”.
He also said there was no reporter from mainstream media who went to him to ask him about his family and what he was going through or to portray more context about his intentions behind the video.
“I was not accorded these same privileges as the gentleman (Chan Jia Xing) in the post, so this is why I made this statement about the media’s bias in reporting these cases,” said Nair.
On the comments he made in response to the Christian video about gay pride, Nair said he felt their comments linking the community to Satan were in the category of hate speech and caused enmity.
He said that at the time of his posts, there was no action taken against the people who made the video at the time, nor any action against those behind the brownface advertisement.
The prosecution said they would take time to prepare their questions for cross-examination. The trial resumes on Wednesday morning, with the prosecution cross-examining Nair on the stand.
Nair was accompanied by his sister, known by her moniker Preetipls, in court.
The penalties for attempting to promote feelings of ill will between racial or religious groups are a jail term of up to three years, a fine, or both.