The following 2 articles were posted around 6th June, slightly more than one week ago.
 Article on Zaobao |
 Article on OMY.sg |
A translation of the Zaobao article is as follow (courtesty of Fiefie):
About midnight of 6th June 2009, the police sent 8 anti-riot vehicles to a foreign workers dormitory in Choa Chu Kang as about 100 foreign workers were involved in a riot.
According to Lianhe Wanbao, they were informed of the riot at the Choa Chu Kang Foreign Workers Dormitory near midnight when about 100 foreign workers were suspected of fighting after getting drunk and the situation quickly went out of control. The police then dispatched 8 anti-riot vehicles to the scene. 6 were wounded and 8 arrested in this incident.
This shocking and bloody incident happened at about 1205am on the 6th of June 2009 and ended only around 2am. The place was Foreign Workers Dormitory No. 2 along Choa Chu Kang Murai Farmway.
An eyewitness said, “I heard that a few foreign workers were drinking at the canteen stalls and creating a scene after getting drunk. After being confronted by other workers, a fight broke out after disagreement. The situation then rapidly went out of control and the place was a total mess. After that, more joined in the fight and there were about 100 people involved in the fight chasing around, pandemonium ensued.”
The dormitory houses about 5000 foreign workers, facilities included a barber shop and various shops, plus a canteen of which there was a stall selling only alcohol.
I first noticed this piece of news on Zaobao’s Twitter. But what made these two old news pieces interesting was that I was unable to find their English equivalent, be it on any other SPH English papers (The Strike Stooge Times, The NewPaper LewdPaper and Today) or even CNA. Much less, foreign news agencies like AFP or Reuters.
I have waited a week to put this up because I wanted to give more time for the English articles to get onto the search engines. Perhaps my skills with search engines is getting rusty, or my RSS feeds are not intensive enough, this piece of news seems to be sucked into an information black hole. Many people I asked, who didn’t read the Chinese evening tabloid – Lianhe Wanbao [联合晚报], are completely unaware of this incident.
Was this piece of news deliberately kept off our national daily for some unknown agenda? Was it done to prevent an outburst of negative sentiments against foreign workers or the setting up of dormitories? Or is this yet another example on just how hopeless the Stooge Times is? Do note I have talked about the possibility of this happening before.
If any of you has read anything like this on the Stooge Times (or any other SPH papers), or CNA, please direct me to them just so I can convince myself that I need to do something about my techniques with search engines.