‘WHO GUARDS THE GUARDIANS’: A CRITIQUE OF POLICE RESPONSE TO THE 2013 LITTLE INDIA RIOT IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

This paper will critically analyse and evaluate the Singapore Police Force?s (SPF) response to the Little India Riot of 2013. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and discourse analysis, it problematises the various securitisation measures implemented; from the gazetted „special zones? to increased police powers and presence, arguing how the underlying strategy seems to mimic the controversial Broken Window theory. Not only will this paper expose the ideologies that underlie state-defined „threats?, it will also reveal how such police responses manipulate and in turn reinforce particular identity politics, particularly deep-lying societal prejudice against the racialised, migrant „Other?. By scrutinizing the subsequent socio-cultural and geopolitical ramifications of these securitisation measures, the paper will also link existing literatures concerning transmigration, migrant identities and community policing with Foucauldian perspectives of governmentality, discourse, and biopolitics, particularly in this unique non-Western setting. Analysis will also add on to wider discourses concerning the confluence of power and space, as well as the fluid nature of the state-citizenry power relationship. These critiques will raise the need for the „guarding of guardians?, to check the actions of persons in power, so as to aid in the formulation of future security-related policies here.