A Killing in Singapore

I have a little story to tell of Singapore. Not of the present day Singapore with its skyscrapers, multimillion bungalows by the sea and rush to put up iconic buildings. The Singapore I write about is of the past, well not exactly that far past but let us say 50 years. a nice round number that is half a century. In some places that would hardly qualify as old but in Singapore 50 years is more than a half a life time away.

A friend told me that living in Singapore is like being on a treadmill. You have no control over the machine because some external intelligence is in control of the speed. Once you are on it, you keep on running and running. Many fall by the wayside, flung off by a speed they can't manage, others choose to get off, while still others have no choice but to run on and on until they drop from exhaustion.

Well that is Singapore of the now. But I write of more leisurely times, of life in the 40s, 50s and 60s. In particular I write of the streets where I live. The first is Amoy Street.




That day the excitement almost carnival like was palpable in Amoy Street and Telok Ayer Street. You could feel it in the air with people hurrying around purposefully, carts being pushed across the road and at one end of Amoy Street just before the road intersects with Upper Cross street and the slip road that connects to Telok Ayer Street two or three lorries were parked across the road.

Away from that intersection you could not hear anything distinct. Shouts, hoorays and the occasional running of people rushing to where the lorries were parked were about all you could hear. There were other lorries parked along the road because Amoy Street in those days had a number of warehouses or "go downs" as these were called. One lorry parked three quarters up the road away provided an ideal lookout for a number of people, some of whom climbed on top of the lorry to get a better look. Some waved handkerchiefs and pieces of cloth, which had been perhaps used to protect themselves from the tear gas at the intersection.

People climbed and jostle for space on top of the lorry. Then there was a "bang" which was amplified by the narrow street. The sound hung in the air almost as if it had a life of its own. A young boy, hardly more than a teenager, laid on the road bathed in blood. The crowd looked on with shock then confusion and finally seemed to awoke to what had happened. They clustered round the body, picked it up and disappeared into one of the houses. Others scurried back from the Telok Ayer Steert junction jumped over the low back wall of the Thian Hock Kheng Temple and disappeared.

The road never fully cleared. It was not as if the road suddenly became deserted. There were still people walking along the road except that they walked silently as if in they did not want to disturb the dead or be part of the tragedy.

This was October 1956 and the incident I described took place during the Chinese Middle School Riot in Singapore. It would be one of the most serious riots in Singapore. In a subsequent blog I will provide some some day photographs showing the place where the shooting happened.