Inara Organics Founder Apologizes For Racist Remark Made After Online Backlash

Nina Chua, founder of Inara Organics, was accused of being racist by influencer Hani Nami for making a comment against the Malay community in Singapore. In a series of Insta stories post, Hani Nami shared the conversations with Nina and some anonymous people about the comment made by Nina.

Hani Nami mentioned that the comment was made on a video she was involved in by Shout.sg. It was a video that discussed the opinions of 11 Singaporean Muslim women on issues that concerned the local Muslim community. One of the issues was about Islamic practices and the LGBTQ+ community. The video has since been removed from SHOUT’s social media accounts, presumably following a backlash from the community with regards to the issue discussed.

Source: Facebook, Nina Chua

The screenshot shared was part of a personal conversation Nina had with Hani where both of them agreed that the video should not have been taken down. Nina mentioned in her official apology that she was upset by the divisive reaction of the audience and decided to share her sentiments with Hani.

Netizens were divided on the issue. Some were enraged at Nina for her comments.

Some said she has the licence to talk bad about her own community, like many others do.

And then there are those who called out on Hani’s tendency to stir online drama.

Nina released an official apology on her Instagram page. She mentioned that she takes full responsibility for what she said.

Even after Nina released an official apology for her remark, Hani went on to share more snippets of conversations between her and Nina’s alleged ex-employees who were treated badly. What started out as an awareness post for alleged racist behaviour became one that discussed alleged mistreatment of employees.

There were those in the comments section who seemed to corroborate what Hani posted in her stories.

Sharing a snippet of a personal conversation that happened a year ago will be viewed as suspicious, especially when both parties shared the same sentiments about the video in question.

What is the main motive then of the post? Awareness or clout? Either way, you got your 5 minutes of fame.

Reporter’s Opinion: If you wanted to highlight how her ex-employees were treated, go straight to the point then.

I agree that what she said is terrible but it was shared with you in confidence. You wanna talk about aib (flaws), you have implicated yourself in sharing that conversation you had with her. While you weren’t making racist remarks, you did share the comments of others with her when she asked for it. If you feel that she was wrong, why not stop her there?

If you want to help those who were mistreated, do it in the right way. If they gave you the permission to share their experiences of working in an alleged toxic environment, do it, expose the company for what they did.

But to accuse them of racism based on a remark made in private in a conversation with you, that can be called slander. People call out the behaviour of their own community all the time, you can’t call that racism.

The next time you call out your friend for “janji melayu”, you cannot cry when they call you a racist.

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