Bukit Brown Campaign

The Bukit Brown Campaign refers to a prominent socio-political and heritage conservation movement in Singapore that began in September 2011. The campaign was launched by civil society groups, heritage advocates, and environmentalists in response to the Singapore government's announcement that it would construct an eight-lane highway through Bukit Brown Cemetery. The movement is widely regarded as a landmark event in Singapore's civil society history, highlighting the tensions between rapid urban development and the preservation of historical, cultural, and ecological spaces.

Background

Opened in 1922 by the British colonial government as a Chinese public cemetery, Bukit Brown Cemetery spans approximately 200 hectares and contains an estimated 100,000 graves, making it one of the largest Chinese burial grounds outside of China. The cemetery features a wide array of historical tombs ranging from ordinary working-class migrants to prominent Chinese pioneers who shaped early Singapore.

In 1973, the cemetery was officially closed to new burials as the People's Action Party (PAP) government adopted a policy of cremation to manage land scarcity. Over the subsequent decades, the cemetery fell into relative disrepair, though it evolved into a significant green belt rich in biodiversity, hosting roughly a quarter of Singapore's bird species.

The Lornie Highway Proposal

In September 2011, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) and the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) announced plans to build a dual four-lane road (later named Lornie Highway) cutting through the cemetery. The project aimed to alleviate severe peak-hour traffic congestion along Lornie Road and the Pan-Island Expressway (PIE), while preparing for a projected 20% to 30% increase in traffic demand by 2020.

The government initially estimated that 5,000 graves would need to be exhumed to facilitate construction. Following consultations with select stakeholders, the alignment was finalized on 19 March 2012, reducing the number of affected graves to 3,746.https://www.lta.gov.sg/content/lta/en/projects/exhumation.html

Activism and Civil Society Mobilization

The announcement triggered immediate pushback from various non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and members of the public who criticized the state for a lack of prior public consultation.

Key Groups and Arguments

Singapore Heritage Society (SHS): Argued that Bukit Brown was an irreplaceable historical asset that provided Singaporeans with a shared identity, roots, and a tangible connection to the nation's ancestral past.

Nature Society (Singapore) (NSS): Emphasized the ecological threat, noting that destroying the green canopy would endanger local wildlife and disrupt the area's natural hydrology, potentially increasing the risk of regional flooding.

Grassroots Networks: Informal groups such as All Things Bukit Brown (the "Brownies"), SOS Bukit Brown, and The Rojak Librarian emerged, largely organizing via Facebook.

Methods of Resistance

Activists engaged in a multi-pronged strategy to raise public awareness and pressure the government:

Organizing free, public-led guided tours of the cemetery to educate citizens on its historical and ecological value.https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2012/03/20/bukit-brown-what-weve-really-lost/

Hosting public forums, academic lectures, and drafting online petitions calling for a freeze on development.

Proposing alternative urban plans, such as utilizing nearby golf courses. Activists highlighted that 22 golf courses and 3 temporary sites occupied 88 per cent of the 1,600 hectares of land designated for sports and recreation, arguing that leisure spaces for the living should be reallocated before disturbing historical graves.

State Response and Mitigation

While the government maintained that the highway was an infrastructural necessity, the scale of public pushback forced several concessions:

Documentation Project: The government commissioned a major documentation initiative led by anthropologist Hui Yew-Foong. Backed by S$250,000 in state funding, a team of researchers and volunteers painstakingly recorded the family histories, inscriptions, and rituals associated with the affected graves before exhumation.

Digital Archives: The National Archives of Singapore (NAS) digitized and released historical burial registers spanning April 1922 to December 1972 alongside cemetery maps to assist relatives in tracking ancestral remains.

Environmental Engineering: LTA altered a portion of the highway's design into a vehicular bridge elevated 5 to 10 metres above the ground. This structure was designed to preserve the natural creeks underneath and maintain an "eco-linkage" for wildlife to pass through.

Despite these efforts, less than a third of the affected graves (1,005 graves) were actively claimed by relatives by July 2012, reflecting a disconnect between active heritage advocates and a largely silent or estranged majority of the public.

Socio-Cultural Perspectives and Critiques

The Bukit Brown controversy sparked a broader academic and public discourse regarding how history is defined in Singapore.

Elitism vs. "History from Below"

Critiques arose concerning the "Selected Heritage Discourse." Both state narratives and initial conservation efforts heavily prioritized the graves of exceptional, wealthy Chinese male pioneers (such as businessman Chew Boon Lay or the grandfather of Lee Kuan Yew). Critics argued that this focus reinforced a narrative of wealth and masculinity, while overlooking the tens of thousands of ordinary working-class migrants whose labor built the colony.

The Kampong History

Oral history documentation brought to light the social history of the adjacent kampongs (villages like Kheam Hock Road, Lorong Halwa, and Kampong Kubor) that existed until the late 1980s and early 1990s. These communities exhibited organic, pragmatic multiculturalism:

The villages consisted of a Chinese majority and a small Malay minority.

Many Malay residents spoke Hokkien, while Chinese residents spoke bazaar Malay.

Malay and Chinese women washed clothes together in local creeks, and some Malay men found employment working as keepers and grass-cutters for Chinese tombs.

Post-Campaign Developments and Legacy

Construction on Lornie Highway began in earnest after 2012. Following repeated structural delays, the southbound section opened in October 2018,https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/first-section-of-lornie-highway-formerly-bukit-brown-road-opens-to-traffic and the northbound section was completed in early 2019. Exhumed remains were either cremated or reinterred into downsized plots at the Choa Chu Kang Cemetery.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/07/singapore-exhumes-cemeteries-roads-malls

In 2014, Bukit Brown was placed on the World Monuments Watch as an endangered site of international significance.

The campaign succeeded in changing institutional attitudes toward heritage preservation in Singapore. Subsequent state projects began incorporating civil society consultations much earlier in the planning phases. Long-term urban blueprints still slate the remainder of Bukit Brown Cemetery for public housing redevelopment by the 2030s to 2050s. However, the artifacts and stories saved during the campaign continue to be preserved:

In 2021, the Kwong Wai Siew Peck San Theng, in partnership with the National Heritage Board, began cataloging 1,500 funerary artifacts recovered from the highway exhumations. These were opened to the public at a dedicated gallery in 2025.

In August 2024, conservation groups launched Sounds of the Earth, an outdoor exhibition showcasing 80 unclaimed artifacts salvaged during the 2013 excavations, ensuring that the legacy of the campaign remains visible to the public.