Singapore: A Nation Of Child Sex Offenders?

Yesterday I had breakfast with Eunice Olsen.

She was our resident politician in the WMD shoot (which came out in URBAN yesterday! Thank you URBAN).

She is one beautiful, smart, sassy girl. Totally into bettering the state of humanity in this world. I find it rare in young people, who either say PC things so that Lao Jiao like me won't give them flak for not caring, or who really really don't care and can't wait to change the subject.

Eunice can talk about helping kids, women, the poor all day long.

One point we agreed on, and it disturbs me, is that even tragedies are faddish in Singapore. People get tired of bad news fast -- except maybe when they live in close proximity to the danger, like SARS.

The issue of child sex tourism will be a long term one. Men in Singapore, Malaysia, Japan and other affluent Asian countries are not going to stop visiting child prostitutes overnight. That is why our battle needs to be a long one also. The more education, the more outcry, the more we fight to protect our own family units, the more results we will have, but these things take time.

Will we stop till the men stop? The answer is no.

But we need soldiers, a moral and tireless army to fight this injustice. We need the next generation to rise up already, and make a stand. We love our country and we are proud of it. Anything that taints the name of Singapore needs to be eradicated.

I do not want my country to be called a nation of child sex offenders.

But if that's how Batam sees us now, I don't blame them.

In Eunice's words, "THIS IS WRONG! THIS IS NOT WHAT OUR COUNTRY IS MADE OF!"

As National Day draws near, I am thinking of this country that our forefathers painstakingly built from scratch. There are more good things about our country than bad, but that doesn't mean we should not work hard to cut out as many of the bad things as possible. I do believe that God has a special purpose for this island state, or we would not have prospered so remarkably in such a short time (not even 50 years!), and we would not have been spared from the ravages of natural disasters like the Boxing Day tsunami. The "close call" still makes me shudder when I think about it -- we were so near to the disaster but yet God's hand lifted us so far from it.

So I believe, whatever opportunity we get to do good now, particularly saving the lives of the innocents, we should do it, while we still have a chance.