SINGAPOREANS who deride foreign-born talent for winning sporting accolades while donning Singapore colours are small-minded, unfair and 'very, very selfish'.
Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports Vivian Balakrishnan was not pulling his punches yesterday.
He said: 'I believe that the survival and prosperity of Singapore depend on our remaining an open society - a society able to attract and absorb and integrate talent of all shapes, sizes, races, languages, religions, countries.
'In other words, do not judge people simply on where they are born.'
He was responding to a question posed by a Singapore Institute of Management student at a forum on youth and sports held at *Scape yesterday.
The student was one of 146 newly-appointed youth ambassadors of the Government's feedback arm Reach, which has, since 2008, been roping in young people to organise dialogues among their peers.
She had asked for his views on the need to engage foreign talent in local sports, particularly that from China.
Her question was a probable nod to Singapore's China-born paddlers' triumph over China at the World Team Table Tennis Championships last month. The victory was marred by carping from some quarters that the team comprised imported talent instead of Singapore-born players.
Dr Balakrishnan referred to those who view Singapore's foreign-born athletes as 'less of a Singaporean, or less of a champion', as 'small-minded', 'unfair' and 'very, very selfish'.
'To deny them the right to call themselves Singaporean is very, very selfish. It's very unsportsmanlike... They have made great sacrifices to be here,' he added.
In fact, he noted, some of the country's table tennis players have spent more than half their lives in Singapore, and have lived here longer than most of the participants at yesterday's youth forum.
Singapore Badminton Association president Lee Yi Shyan, referring to players' Yao Lei and Shinta Mulia Sari's historic win at the Li-Ning Singapore Open Super Series 2010 recently, agreed.
He said: 'They made a lot of sacrifices, they took a step of faith in this country... and won the honour in Singapore. There's no reason why they should receive less respect and less encouragement from us.'
Yao is from China and Shinta from Indonesia.
During yesterday's forum for the youth ambassadors, Dr Balakrishnan also tackled questions ranging from career prospects in Singapore sports to the difficulty Singaporean men face in getting deferment from National Service to compete in overseas sporting tournaments.
A female student from the Singapore Sports School pointed out that national long jumper Matthew Goh was denied a deferment - at a time when his personal best put him within reach of a bronze medal.
Replying, Dr Balakrishnan said he could certainly look into the case.
He added, however: 'We normally do support their appeals, but the final decision is made by Mindef. Deferments are not given automatically simply because someone says 'I'm a sportsman'... so each application, each competition will have to be assessed on its own merit.'
melk@sph.com.sg