The clock struck 9:23pm when hundreds of workers originating from the South Asian sub-continent got together at the junction of Race Course Road and Hampshire Road, Singapore, last Sunday. As if gone amok, they destroyed a bus and attacked its driver with cudgels. A few minutes later they damaged another bus and turned a police car upside down and set on fire an ambulance pulling up at the scene.

The mob scene continued. The rioters attacked the