SG-M-10: Racial Harmony and Religious Governance — Engineering Coexistence (1964–2025)

Document Code: SG-M-10 Full Title: Racial Harmony and Religious Governance: Engineering Coexistence — From the 1964 Riots to the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act and Beyond Coverage Period: 1964–2025 Level Designation: Level 2 Status: [COMPLETE] Primary Sources Consulted:

1. Lee Kuan Yew, The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (Singapore: Times Editions, 1998), chapters on racial politics and communalism
2. Lee Kuan Yew, From Third World to First (2000), chapters on multiracialism and social engineering
3. Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act (MRHA), Parliament of Singapore, 1990; amended 2019
4. Presidential Council for Religious Harmony, annual reports and restraining order records
5. Chua Beng Huat, Communitarian Ideology and Democracy in Singapore (London: Routledge, 1995)
6. Lily Zubaidah Rahim, The Singapore Dilemma: The Political and Educational Marginality of the Malay Community (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1998)
7. Mathew Mathews, "Accommodation, Contestation, and Self-Regulation: The Three Faces of Religious Governance in Singapore," in Religion and the State in Singapore, ed. Lai Ah Eng (Singapore: ISEAS, 2008)
8. Eugene Tan, "Keeping God in Place: The Management of Religion in Singapore," in Religious Diversity in Singapore, ed. Lai Ah Eng (Singapore: ISEAS, 2008)
9. Shared Values White Paper (Cmd. 1 of 1991), Parliament of Singapore
10. Report of the Select Committee on the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Bill, Parliament of Singapore, 1990
11. Inter-Racial and Religious Confidence Circles (IRCC), Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, reports and guidelines
12. Singapore Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), debates on MRHA (1990, 2019), the Sedition Act, and communal incidents, various years
13. Institute of Policy Studies, surveys on race, religion, and national identity, various years 2013–2024
14. Tharman Shanmugaratnam, speeches on multiracialism and social cohesion, various occasions 2010–2023
15. K. Shanmugam, speeches on religious harmony and POFMA, various occasions 2017–2025
16. Daniel P.S. Goh, Race and Multiculturalism in Malaysia and Singapore (London: Routledge, 2008)
17. Report of the Commission of Inquiry on the 1964 Race Riots, Singapore Government
18. Constitution of the Republic of Singapore, Articles 12, 15, 16, 152, and 153 (provisions on equality, religious freedom, minority rights)
19. Presidential Council for Minority Rights, reports and advisory opinions
20. Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, Singapore Together and Forward Singapore engagement reports on social cohesion (2022–2023)

Related Documents:

• SG-M-07: Multiracialism as State Ideology — Engineering Harmony in a Plural Society
• SG-M-05: The Social Contract — Performance Legitimacy and the Bargain
• SG-M-04: The Communitarian-Individualism Tension
• SG-G-24: The Internal Security Act: Complete History of Application (1963–2026)
• SG-J-01: Racial and Religious Harmony — The Managed Miracle
• SG-K-01: Separation from Malaysia
• SG-A-05: The 1964 Race Riots
• SG-I-12: The People's Association and Grassroots Organisations

Version Date: 2026-04-02

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1. Key Takeaways

• Singapore's management of racial and religious diversity is arguably the most consequential and most deliberate act of social engineering in the country's history. In a nation of 5.9 million people comprising Chinese (approximately 74%), Malay (approximately 13.5%), Indian (approximately 9%), and other ethnic groups (approximately 3.5%), with adherents of Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, and no religion all present in significant numbers, the potential for communal friction is ever-present. The 1964 race riots — which killed 36 people and injured over 500 — established the founding trauma that has driven Singapore's approach to racial and religious management ever since. Every policy in this domain, from the Ethnic Integration Policy in HDB estates to the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act, traces its intellectual lineage to the conviction that left unmanaged, communal differences will produce violence.

• The Singapore model of religious governance rests on three pillars: legal regulation (the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act, the Sedition Act, the ISA), institutional management (the Presidential Council for Religious Harmony, the Inter-Racial and Religious Confidence Circles, the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore — MUIS), and social norms (the expectation that religious expression will be moderate, that proselytisation will be restrained, and that religious leaders will cooperate with the state). This three-pillar model is distinctive in comparative perspective: it is more interventionist than the American separation of church and state, more structured than the British accommodation model, and less restrictive than the French laïcité or Chinese state atheism.

• The Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act (MRHA), enacted in 1990 after two years of intense parliamentary debate and public consultation, gives the government power to issue restraining orders against religious leaders or members who threaten religious harmony — whether through aggressive proselytisation, inciting animosity between religious groups, or mixing religion with politics. The Act was prompted by concerns about the growth of charismatic Christianity in the 1980s, the influence of transnational Islamic revivalism, and specific incidents including the arrest of a Catholic social worker priest for alleged Marxist conspiracy (Operation Spectrum, 1987). The MRHA has been used sparingly — as of 2025, no public restraining orders have been issued, though the threat of the Act is believed to exercise a disciplinary effect on religious organisations.

• The Ethnic Integration Policy (EIP), introduced in 1989 for HDB estates, mandates that the proportion of each ethnic group in every HDB block and neighbourhood must fall within prescribed limits. The policy was designed to prevent the formation of ethnic enclaves — a phenomenon that had occurred in Singapore's pre-HDB kampong settlements and that the government believed would entrench communalism and hinder national integration. The EIP is enforced through restrictions on HDB flat sales: a buyer from an ethnic group that has reached its quota in a particular block or neighbourhood cannot purchase a flat there. The policy is occasionally controversial (it can limit resale options and reduce property values for sellers in quota-constrained situations), but it has been credited with maintaining the visual and social integration of HDB estates that is a distinctive feature of Singaporean life.

• Islam occupies a unique position in Singapore's religious governance framework. The Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS), established under the Administration of Muslim Law Act (1966), is a statutory board that administers the Muslim community's religious affairs, including mosque management, halal certification, the hajj pilgrimage, Islamic education, and the collection of zakat (religious tithe). Singapore is one of the few countries where a Muslim minority community is administered through a state statutory board — a structure that gives the government direct oversight of Islamic institutions while providing the Muslim community with state-backed resources and infrastructure. This arrangement has been praised by some as a model of constructive state-religion engagement and criticised by others as excessive state control over religious affairs.

• The Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) arrests of December 2001–August 2002, in which the Internal Security Department detained 36 individuals linked to a regional Islamist terror network planning attacks on Singapore (including a plot to truck-bomb Western embassies and a planned attack on Yishun MRT station), tested Singapore's religious governance framework. The government's response combined security action (ISA detentions) with community engagement (the establishment of the Religious Rehabilitation Group, or RRG, to counsel detained JI members) and a deliberate effort to prevent anti-Muslim backlash. The IRCCs, activated across all constituencies, provided grassroots infrastructure for interfaith dialogue. The incident is regarded as a successful case study in managing security threats without communal polarisation.

• The rise of social media has created new challenges for Singapore's religious governance model. Online platforms allow religious content to spread rapidly beyond the controlled institutional channels that the government has traditionally managed. Cases of offensive religious commentary — such as the 2019 case of a Singaporean couple who posted anti-Muslim and anti-Catholic content online, resulting in sedition charges — have highlighted the difficulty of applying offline norms of religious restraint to the digital public sphere. The 2019 amendments to the MRHA specifically addressed online conduct, expanding the Act's scope to cover electronic communications.

• Generational shifts are testing the assumptions underlying Singapore's religious governance framework. Younger Singaporeans, born into a multiracial society and educated in integrated schools, may take racial harmony for granted rather than understanding it as an achievement requiring continuous maintenance. At the same time, survey data from the Institute of Policy Studies (2019, 2023) suggests that while racial and religious tolerance remains high, social distance between ethnic groups persists — Singaporeans of all races are more likely to form close friendships within their own ethnic group than across ethnic lines. The question for policymakers is whether the institutional framework that maintained harmony for the founding and second generations can sustain harmony for a generation that did not experience the formative traumas and may not accept the same level of state management of communal relations.

• Singapore's approach to racial and religious governance has drawn international attention as a potential model for diverse societies. The combination of constitutional protections (Articles 12, 15, 152 on equality, religious freedom, and minority rights), institutional infrastructure (MUIS, IRCC, Presidential Council for Religious Harmony), legal tools (MRHA, Sedition Act), and social engineering (EIP, integrated national service, common school curriculum) constitutes one of the most comprehensive governance frameworks for managing diversity in the world. Whether it can be replicated without Singapore's specific political context — a dominant party with the authority to enforce these measures — is an open question.

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2. The Founding Trauma: The 1964 Race Riots

The 1964 race riots remain the defining reference point for Singapore's approach to racial and religious governance. On 21 July 1964, during a procession celebrating the Prophet Muhammad's birthday, violence erupted between Malay and Chinese communities in the Geylang Serai area. The riots, which lasted several days before being suppressed by security forces, killed 23 people and injured 454. A second wave of riots in September 1964 killed a further 13 and injured 106.

The immediate causes included political manipulation — UMNO Malay extremists had been stoking communal tensions in response to the PAP's promotion of "Malaysian Malaysia" — and underlying socioeconomic grievances among Singapore's Malay community, who were poorer and less educated on average than the Chinese majority. The riots demonstrated that communal violence was not a hypothetical risk but an immediate reality, and that it could erupt with devastating speed in a densely populated, multiethnic city.

For Lee Kuan Yew and the PAP leadership, the 1964 riots established three principles that have governed Singapore's approach ever since. First, racial and religious harmony cannot be left to organic social processes; it must be actively engineered and maintained by the state. Second, communal identity is a permanent feature of Singaporean society that cannot be eliminated, only managed. Third, the costs of communal violence — in lives, social trust, and economic confidence — are so catastrophic that the state is justified in imposing significant constraints on individual expression and communal mobilisation to prevent it.

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3. The Constitutional and Legal Framework

Singapore's constitutional framework for managing racial and religious diversity is multi-layered, combining guarantees of individual rights with provisions for collective protection and state intervention.

Article 12 guarantees equality before the law and prohibits discrimination on the grounds of religion, race, descent, or place of birth. Article 15 guarantees freedom of religion, including the right to profess, practise, and propagate one's religion — subject to restrictions for public order, public health, or morality. Article 152 charges the government with the responsibility to "constantly care for the interests of the racial and religious minorities in Singapore." Article 153 specifically references the Malay community's special position as the indigenous people of Singapore and charges the government with protecting their interests.

The Sedition Act (originally colonial legislation, retained and amended after independence) criminalises acts or words with a tendency to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population. The Penal Code includes provisions against deliberately wounding religious feelings. The Internal Security Act has been used in cases where communal agitation is deemed to threaten national security.

The Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act (1990, amended 2019) is the centrepiece of religious governance legislation. It empowers the Minister for Home Affairs, on the advice of the Presidential Council for Religious Harmony, to issue restraining orders against any priest, monk, pastor, imam, or religious leader who (a) causes feelings of enmity or hostility between different religious groups, (b) carries out activities to promote a political cause under the guise of religion, (c) excites disaffection against the government under the guise of religion, or (d) engages in subversive activities under the guise of religion.

The MRHA was enacted after a period in the late 1980s when two trends alarmed the government: the growth of charismatic Christianity (particularly in English-speaking middle-class communities), which was perceived as aggressively proselytising among other faiths; and the influence of transnational Islamic movements, particularly after the Iranian Revolution, which was perceived as potentially radicalising Singapore's Muslim community. The Act's passage was preceded by the publication of the White Paper on Maintenance of Religious Harmony (1989) and extensive parliamentary debate in which all aspects of state-religion relations were examined.

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4. Institutional Infrastructure: MUIS, IRCC, and the RRG

Singapore's institutional infrastructure for managing racial and religious relations is among the most elaborate in the world.

MUIS (Islamic Religious Council of Singapore), established under the Administration of Muslim Law Act (1966), administers all aspects of Islamic religious life in Singapore. It manages mosques (over 70 in Singapore), certifies halal products, administers the hajj pilgrimage, collects zakat, operates Islamic education institutions (madrasahs), and issues fatwas (religious rulings) through its Fatwa Committee. MUIS operates as a statutory board — funded partly by government grants and partly by community contributions — giving the state direct oversight of Islamic institutional life. This arrangement is unique among Muslim minority communities globally and reflects Singapore's developmental state approach: the state does not suppress religion but manages it through institutions.

MUIS's role has evolved significantly since the JI arrests of 2001–2002. The council took a leading role in the community response, publicly repudiating JI's ideology and cooperating with the government's deradicalisation programme. The Religious Rehabilitation Group (RRG), established in 2003, is a voluntary group of Islamic scholars and teachers who counsel detained JI members and their families. The RRG's work — combining theological counter-arguments with community support — has been studied internationally as a model of community-based deradicalisation.

Inter-Racial and Religious Confidence Circles (IRCCs), established in 2002 in response to the JI threat, operate in every constituency in Singapore. Each IRCC brings together religious leaders from the constituency's temples, mosques, churches, and other places of worship with community leaders and grassroots organisations. The IRCCs serve as early warning systems for communal tension, forums for interfaith dialogue, and rapid response networks in the event of communal incidents. They are coordinated by the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY) and are a cornerstone of the government's strategy for preventing communal conflict.

The Presidential Council for Religious Harmony (PCRH) was established under the MRHA to advise the government on restraining orders and broader issues of religious harmony. Its members include representatives of the major religious groups in Singapore. The PCRH has operated quietly and has not, as of 2025, recommended the issuance of any restraining order — a fact that the government cites as evidence that the Act's deterrent effect has been sufficient.

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5. The Ethnic Integration Policy and Social Engineering

The Ethnic Integration Policy (EIP), introduced in March 1989, is the most direct form of social engineering in Singapore's racial governance framework. The policy sets ethnic quotas for every HDB block and neighbourhood, ensuring that no single ethnic group dominates any residential area.

The quotas are: Chinese — 84% per neighbourhood, 87% per block; Malay — 22% per neighbourhood, 25% per block; Indian and Others — 10% per neighbourhood, 13% per block. When a flat in a block or neighbourhood has reached its quota for a particular ethnic group, further sales to members of that group are prohibited.

The policy was introduced in response to evidence that ethnic clustering was emerging in some HDB estates — particularly Malay concentration in Bedok and Tampines and Chinese concentration in some central estates. The government argued that such clustering would replicate the ethnic enclaves of the pre-HDB kampong era, undermine national integration, and create the conditions for communal tension.

The EIP has been broadly effective in maintaining residential integration: walking through any HDB estate in Singapore, one encounters a visible mix of ethnic groups at the block and corridor level. National Service (mandatory military conscription for all male citizens and PRs) reinforces this integration by bringing young men from all ethnic groups together in a shared institutional experience.

Critics of the EIP argue that it restricts housing choices, can reduce property values for sellers in quota-constrained situations (particularly Malay homeowners in blocks that have reached the Malay quota), and treats ethnicity as a fixed and homogeneous category that does not reflect the increasing complexity of Singapore's population (including mixed-race families and naturalised citizens from diverse backgrounds).

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6. The Post-9/11 Test: JI and Community Resilience

The arrest of Jemaah Islamiyah members in Singapore from December 2001 onwards represented the most severe test of the religious governance framework since its establishment.

In December 2001, the Internal Security Department (ISD) arrested 15 members of a JI cell in Singapore, including the cell leader, Mas Selamat Kastari. The cell had been planning multiple attacks: truck-bomb attacks on Western embassies on Orchard Road, an attack on the Yishun MRT station, and attacks on US naval vessels visiting Changi Naval Base. Surveillance videos of potential targets were recovered from an al-Qaeda safe house in Afghanistan. Further arrests in August 2002 brought the total to 36.

The government's response was calibrated to address both the security threat and the communal dimension. On the security side, the ISA detentions neutralised the immediate threat. On the communal side, the government took several deliberate steps to prevent anti-Muslim backlash:

1. Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and senior ministers met with Malay-Muslim community leaders immediately after the arrests, emphasising that the JI members did not represent the Muslim community.
2. MUIS issued a strong public statement repudiating JI's ideology as contrary to Islam.
3. IRCCs were activated across all constituencies to facilitate interfaith dialogue and reassure communities.
4. Media coverage was managed to avoid sensationalism and to highlight the distinction between JI extremists and mainstream Muslim Singaporeans.
5. The Religious Rehabilitation Group was established in 2003 to provide theological counselling to detainees.

The result was that Singapore avoided the communal polarisation that accompanied similar terrorism arrests in other countries. The JI episode is cited by the government as evidence that Singapore's institutional infrastructure for managing communal relations works — that decades of investment in MUIS, national service, HDB integration, and interfaith dialogue produced a social resilience that prevented a security crisis from becoming a communal crisis.

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7. Christianity, Proselytisation, and the Boundaries of Religious Expression

The growth of Christianity in Singapore — from approximately 10% of the resident population in 1980 to approximately 18.9% in 2020 — has created specific governance challenges, particularly around proselytisation.

The 1980s saw rapid growth of charismatic and evangelical Christianity, particularly among English-educated Chinese Singaporeans. Some churches adopted aggressive evangelism strategies that included approaching members of other faiths (particularly Buddhists and Taoists) with the explicit aim of conversion. This generated complaints from Buddhist and Taoist organisations and contributed to the government's decision to enact the MRHA.

A series of incidents have highlighted the tension between Christians' constitutional right to "propagate" their religion (Article 15) and the state's interest in maintaining communal harmony. In 2009, a group of Christians were accused of attempting to take over AWARE (Association of Women for Action and Research), Singapore's leading feminist organisation, in pursuit of a religious agenda opposing homosexuality. The incident — resolved through an extraordinary general meeting at which the attempted takeover was reversed — demonstrated the potential for religious activism to disrupt civil society institutions.

In 2010, a Christian couple was convicted under the Sedition Act for distributing anti-Islamic and anti-Catholic tracts. In 2017, a Christian pastor's remarks about Buddhism and Taoism generated complaints and a police investigation, though no charges were filed. These incidents illustrate the government's approach: maintaining a clear red line against religious speech that denigrates other faiths, while allowing broad space for religious practice and internal community life.

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8. Islam, Malay Identity, and the "Double Minority" Challenge

Singapore's Malay-Muslim community faces what scholars have called the "double minority" challenge: they are an ethnic minority in a Chinese-majority country and a religious minority in a predominantly non-Muslim society. This dual marginality creates specific governance challenges that Singapore's racial and religious framework must address.

The Malay community has historically lagged behind the Chinese and Indian communities on socioeconomic indicators — educational attainment, income, and professional representation. While the gap has narrowed significantly since independence (Malay university enrolment has increased from negligible levels in the 1960s to rates approaching the national average), persistent disparities remain. The government has addressed these through targeted programmes — Mendaki (the Council for the Education of Muslim Children, established 1982), mosque-based educational programmes, and financial assistance schemes — while avoiding affirmative action quotas that might trigger resentment from other ethnic groups.

The relationship between Malay ethnic identity and Islamic religious identity creates a governance complexity: unlike Chinese or Indian Singaporeans, whose ethnic and religious identities are separable (a Chinese Singaporean may be Buddhist, Christian, Taoist, or non-religious), Malay identity in Singapore is closely bound to Islam. This means that policies affecting Islam — dietary requirements, dress codes, educational content — inevitably have an ethnic dimension, and policies addressing Malay socioeconomic disadvantage inevitably intersect with religious institutions.

The rise of global Islamic revivalism since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the growth of transnational Islamist networks, and the post-9/11 security environment have added a security dimension to the governance of Singapore's Muslim community. The government has sought to promote what it calls "Islam in the context of Singapore" — a moderate, contextualised interpretation of Islam compatible with life in a multiracial secular state. MUIS has been the institutional vehicle for this promotion, issuing religious guidance that emphasises compatibility between Islamic practice and Singaporean citizenship.

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9. Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and the Management of Diversity

While media and scholarly attention tends to focus on Christianity and Islam as the most dynamic and potentially contentious elements of Singapore's religious landscape, the governance framework also manages a complex ecosystem of Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu, and other religious traditions.

Buddhism is Singapore's largest religious affiliation (approximately 31.1% in 2020), followed by Christianity (18.9%), Islam (15.6%), Taoism (8.8%), Hinduism (5.0%), and "no religion" (20.0%). The "no religion" category has grown significantly — from 13% in 2000 to 20% in 2020 — representing one of the most important demographic shifts in Singapore's religious landscape.

The Hindu Endowments Board, established under the Hindu Endowments Act (1968), administers Hindu temples and endowments in Singapore, serving a function for the Hindu community analogous to MUIS's role for Muslims. The Singapore Buddhist Federation coordinates Buddhist organisations. These institutional bodies provide the state with interlocutors for each major religious community, facilitating the management of interfaith relations and the resolution of intra-community disputes.

The growth of the "no religion" category introduces a new dynamic. A population that is less religiously committed may be more tolerant of other faiths (reducing the risk of communal friction) but may also be less invested in the institutional framework of religious governance (reducing participation in IRCCs and other interfaith mechanisms). The government has begun to adapt its approach, emphasising "common space" — the idea that public spaces in a diverse society must accommodate all groups, including the non-religious — alongside the traditional focus on interfaith harmony.

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10. Conclusion: The Managed Miracle and Its Fragilities

Singapore's management of racial and religious diversity is often described as a "miracle" — and in comparative terms, it is remarkable. In a world where ethnic and religious diversity routinely produces conflict, discrimination, and violence, Singapore has maintained social peace for over six decades while managing one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse populations in Asia. The absence of communal violence since 1969 (the last incident involving a religious dimension) is an achievement that should not be taken for granted.

But the miracle is managed, not spontaneous. It depends on a comprehensive institutional framework, active state intervention, legal constraints on religious and communal expression, and a social compact in which citizens accept significant limits on individual freedom in exchange for communal peace. This managed approach has costs: it constrains religious expression, limits the space for robust public debate about race and religion, and creates a surface harmony that may not reflect deeper social realities (the IPS survey finding that social distance between ethnic groups persists despite residential integration is significant).

The framework's most significant vulnerability is generational change. The founding generation accepted the constraints because they had lived through the alternative — the 1964 riots, the communal tensions of the Malaysia years, the post-Konfrontasi security anxieties. The current generation, born into harmony, may question why the constraints are necessary. The government's challenge is to maintain the institutional infrastructure and social norms that have sustained harmony while adapting to a population that is more individualistic, more globally connected, more religiously diverse (including the growth of the non-religious), and less willing to accept state management of personal beliefs.

Singapore's approach to racial and religious governance is not a model that can be exported wholesale — it depends on specific political conditions (a dominant party with the authority to enforce integration policies), specific historical experiences (the 1964 riots as founding trauma), and specific institutional forms (MUIS, IRCCs, the MRHA) that may not transplant to other contexts. But it demonstrates that with sufficient political will, institutional capacity, and willingness to treat social cohesion as a governance priority rather than a natural outcome, diverse societies can be managed peacefully. That lesson, if not the specific model, has universal relevance.

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Cross-references: For multiracialism as state ideology, see SG-M-07. For the social contract framework, see SG-M-05. For the 1964 race riots, see SG-A-05. For the ISA and internal security, see SG-G-24. For the People's Association and grassroots organisations, see SG-I-12. For press freedom and religious expression online, see SG-J-04 and SG-J-09.