Two new cases of radicalised maids were revealed in Parliament yesterday, highlighting the inescapable threat of extremism on our shores.
In an update on the threat posed by radicalised foreigners in Singapore, Second Minister for Home Affairs Desmond Lee stated that both of the Indonesian nationals had been ISIS supporters who were radicalised via social media. One was a 25-year-old who’d been working in Singapore for two years, while the other was a 28-year-old maid who worked here for nearly five years.
The younger radicalised maid was said to have intended to travel to Syria with her foreign boyfriend to join ISIS. Both domestic workers however had no plans to carry out acts of violence in Singapore, Lee noted, and both have been repatriated to their home countries.
The new cases would mean that there’ve been a total of nine radicalised maids found in Singapore since 2015. Lee assures that the Ministry of Home Affairs have been working closely with the Ministry of Manpower as well as various agencies including the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (Muis) and the Religious Rehabilitation Group to sensitise foreign workers to Singapore’s “multi-religious social values”.
