Homeland Security

In Singapore, terror is everywhere. It might not look on the surface as if terror is everywhere, or anywhere, but it is, so get the fuck ready. On the platforms and in the carriages of your local MRT, vidi-screens confirm this and encourage you to observe your fellow passengers—the jumpy guy in the green raincoat—he may not just be nervous about the possibility of showers, he may be preparing a terrorist attack or littering spree. If the nervous man tries to leave his bag on the train you should say “Sir, I think you have left your bag,” to which he will reply “Ah yes, my bomb.” If he runs away, perhaps pausing to shout “Ha ha, suckers!” then don’t panic, don’t run screaming from the carriage while smashing small children from your path, just do as the prim looking lady in the video does and calmly alert the driver using your carriage’s emergency phone. Simple.

When we arrived in Singapore our friends Anne and Richard were keen to show us their bomb shelter. By decree, every new apartment building in Singapore has to have a bomb shelter. It is all part of a widespread government initiative to get “Bi-zazzy” with terror. Actually, these shelters are just small concrete rooms with no bomb-retardant properties. Their only real use, in the event of an attack, is to serve as a convenient tomb. Anne and Richard told us that a lot of unscrupulous people use them as sleeping quarters for the maid.

As we visit, the terror-hysteria is at an all-time high. Mas Selamat Kastari, former bus mechanic, father of 5, and suspected leader of the Singapore arm of the Islamist militant group Jemaah Islamiyah, has escaped from a detention centre after asking to use the toilet. “He walks with a limp and is presently at large,” the Home Affairs Ministry said in a statement to The Associated Press. Now his glazed eyes stare down at you from a thousand wanted posters, taunting you, daring you to find his clever hiding place, “Maybe you should only have counted to 50, assholes!” he seems to say. “Maybe you should have imprisoned me, instead of just giving me detention! Ha!” Despite his obvious physical giveaway and the extra time it must have added to his escape, the search is in its third hilarious month and locals are now becoming depressed, speculating glumly that he’s probably limped to another country. On 21 April, the Committee of Inquiry announced its findings: he had escaped through an unsecured bathroom window. The Committee attributed the escape to three critical factors – first, the lack of grilles where the window was located; second, Mas Selamat being allowed to close the toilet door; third; a physical weakness at the perimeter fencing.

So your vigilance is needed, the posters say, to help us catch this dangerous terrorist. Again. Your vigilance is needed, the subway video says, to protect Singapore from terror, and the cost of failing to remain vigilant, or to act on your suspicions, is almost certain disaster, and it underlines this by showing a train carriage, very similar to the one you’re sitting on, disappearing into a tunnel before exploding in a brilliant ball of fire. The carriage is very quiet after this video. If you ever travel to Singapore and have the chance to see this production for yourself, try to resist responding in the way I did: by looking around the carriage at your fellow passengers with your mouth open in a way that says “Are they fucking KIDDING us,” because no one else thinks it’s strange, and all you’ll get back is a sober look that says, “He looks crazy. I wonder if he’s a terrorist.”