Singapore: Dismissed

In most armies, an announcement to a company of recruits that their services were no longer required would be followed by cheers. In Singapore last week, such an announcement provoked a mutiny.

The rioters were some 380 Malays, members of a 470-man recruit-training company of Singapore's snappy Local Defense Corps, a military unit that guards power plants and government buildings in the tiny Asian seaport state. Though Singapore's population of nearly 2,000,000 is four-fifths Chinese, half of its cops and soldiers come from the 270,000 Malays, who comprise a jealous and often violent minority. Hence, when a Chinese Defense Corps major last week ordered the recruit company to split up by race and then dismissed the Malays from military service, the amok mechanism was triggered. The Malays chased the Chinese major, beat up the Chinese recruits, who had not been dismissed, wrecked the company canteen, snatched up broken bottles and table legs (plus $100 from the till), burned two motorcycles and overturned a truck.

By the time Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew arrived on the scene half an hour later, police billies had subdued the rioters. Lee soothed them with an apology for the "misunderstanding" and a pep talk in faultless Malay on his favorite theme, the satisfaction of Singapore's multiracial way of life. When Lee put down his bullhorn, the recruits cheered him heartily. Still, it was a close call. Communal rioting in July and September 1964 took more than 100 lives and caused severe property damage. Though Lee told the recruits that they could certainly remain in the Army, it seemed equally certain that someone in Singapore's Chinese-dominated government was hoping that some day the balance of Chinese and Malays in the armed forces would be altered— in favor of the Chinese.