The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) slammed the apology issued by Preeti and Subhas Nair issued earlier in the afternoon on Aug. 2.

The Nair siblings' apology exactly mirrored the first apology statement issued by creative agency Havas for the "brownface" ad.

In a media statement released late on Friday night, Aug. 2, MHA called the Nair siblings' apology "insincere".

MHA said:

"The statement contains a mock, insincere apology. It is a spoof of an earlier apology issued by Havas Worldwide for the E-Pay advertisement (Nets subsequently issued an apology).

This spoofing is a pretence of an apology, and in fact shows contempt for the many Singaporeans who have expressed concern at their blatantly racist rap video."

MHA: Nair siblings have previously expressed racist sentiments

MHA said this is not the first time the Nair siblings have expressed "racist sentiments".

The statement read:

"About a year ago, Ms Nair published a video where she acted as a Chinese and mocked the Chinese community’s practices, culture and traditions. She portrayed Chinese as money-minded gamblers."

MHA was likely referring to this video:

Claims about systemic discrimination "blatantly false"

As for Subhas, MHA said that a song he wrote for National Day about systemic discrimination in Singapore is "blatantly false".

"Mr Nair wrote a song recently that says that Singapore condones systemic discrimination. This song was written for MediaCorp as part of this year’s National Day celebrations.

Among the lyrics in the song: “We live in a system that has normalised us... to walk oblivious to a brown man stopped and ID checked”. This is blatantly false."

Subhas shared a snippet of the song and its lyrics on his Instagram on July 31.

Following the rap video controversy, Subhas was cut from a CNA documentary about National Day.

MHA to take action against offensive statements, regardless of race

MHA noted that it has taken action against perpetrators who made offensive and illegal comments, regardless of their races.

MHA cited examples where it had taken action against other people who had made racially offensive remarks, including a Chinese man who vandalised void decks and sheltered walkways with offensive words about Malays.

MHA said:

"His messages had been seen by far fewer people than the videos issued by Ms and Mr Nair."

MHA added that the police are continuing their investigations and taking advice from the Attorney-General's Chambers.