Object size: Refer to parts
This image is part of the "Riot Recollections" (2014) series by documentary photographer Zakaria Zainal and writer Prabhu Silvam. It consists of portraits of eye-witnesses and their accounts of the riot that struck Little India on 8 December 2013 — the worst outbreak of violence Singapore had experienced in four decades since the outbreak of communal riots in the 1960s. The incident, sparked by a fatal accident involving a migrant worker at the junction of Race Course Road and Hampshire Road, resulted in 54 officers and 8 civilians sustaining injuries and 30 damaged vehicles.Hitting the ground fresh a week after the incident, Zakaria and Prabhu sought to better understand what provoked the outpouring of anger by adopting the "vox populi" approach. Depicted here is Yeo Eng Meng, a shopkeeper on Chander Road, whose experience of the 2013 riot was the second in his lifetime, the first being the 1969 racial riots in post-independence Singapore, which erupted among Malays and Chinese during a procession held to celebrate the birthday of Prophet Muhammad.Yeo, a shop owner on Chander Road, made the decision to close the shutters of his shop and take refuge within its premises after encountering a mob of six to eight people defacing his lorry parked near the shop. He left the scene on his lorry as soon as the commotion died down. Yeo believed that the migrant workers involved in the riot were not naturally inclined to violence and expressed the need to understand the causes of the outbreak of violence.