Raeesah Khan


Raeesah Begum Bte Farid Khan is a Singaporean activist and politician of the Workers' Party. She was elected into the Parliament of Singapore as a representative for the Sengkang Group Representation Constituency following the 2020 Singaporean general election.

Early life and career

Raeesah has been a social activist since she was 17, mainly focusing on underprivileged families, survivors of sexual abuse, youth activists, migrant workers and refugee issues.
Prior to entering politics, she studied economics and marketing at Murdoch University. From 2014 to 2015, she was also an elected member on the senatorial governing body at Murdoch University.
In 2016, Raeesah Khan founded the Reyna Movement, an organisation that aims to empower marginalised women and children through up-skilling programs and community engagement. The Reyna Movement has worked with women's shelters, the homeless, at-risk children and low-income families in Singapore.

Political career

Raeesah became a member of the Workers' Party in 2018, having previously volunteered in the party's grassroots activities. On 30 June 2020, She was announced as one of the party's four members contesting the Sengkang Group Representation Constituency as part of the 2020 Singaporean general election, alongside Jamus Lim, He Ting Ru, and Louis Chua. She is also the youngest candidate of the party.
Together with the Sengkang Worker's Party team, she was subsequently elected with 52.13% of the votes, defeating the People's Action Party in an upset victory that secured a second group representation constituency for the Workers' Party. She became the first female Malay opposition candidate to successfully contest a General Election, and the youngest Member of Parliament in the 14th Parliament of Singapore.

Controversy

Allegations of discriminatory comments

Prior to getting elected, two separate police reports were lodged against Raeesah for allegedly making two online comments, both relating to the discrimination of race and religion; The reports were based against her Facebook post in May 2020, which had criticised the Singapore law enforcement authorities for discriminating against Singaporean citizens and said that "rich Chinese" and "white people" were treated differently under the law, which was largely based on the differences in sentences handed out to individuals who broke the circuit breaker measures in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and another in February 2018 in reference to the 2018 City Harvest Church ruling. WP later came out to support Raeesah; Raeesah also apologised and released a statement stating that her intention was "never to cause social divisions but to raise awareness on minority issues", adding that she also regretted making her "insensitive" comments.
Since the incident, many netizens labelled the bringing up of her past comments as a political move, with hashtags such as "#IStandWithRaeesah" trending on Twitter. A Change.org petition was made on 6 July to let Raeesah campaign smoothly and conduct investigations only after the elections, which had garnered almost 20,000 signatures by polling day. On 7 July, the police revealed that they’re investigating the man who allegedly reported Raeesah over social media comments which intended to wound religious and racial feelings.

Personal life

Raeesah Khan is the daughter of Farid Khan, the president of the Singapore Malay Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who intended to run in the 2017 Singaporean presidential election but had his Certificate of Eligibility rejected, and his wife, Naeemah Shaikh Abu Bakar. Her father is of Pakistani descent, while her mother is of Arab descent. She has a younger brother, Yusuf Khan.
Raeesah married Mahadhir Caffoor on 14 July 2018. She gave birth to an infant son, Raees Khan Caffoor, on 12 July 2019.