Mr Singh’s speech resonated with many Singaporeans who felt that he had echoed what they felt in their hearts. However, what has transpired since his speech has led to criticisms of Mr Singh instead, that he didn’t put his money where his mouth was in failing to vote against the White Paper in Parliament.

Mr Singh was absent from the House when the vote was called. He was one of eight MPs who did not cast their votes on the White Paper. When asked by the media if he had absented himself from the vote on purpose, Mr Singh declined to elaborate or explain if he indeed did.

The Straits Times reported that “he was in Parliament earlier on the day the vote was taken, but did not want to say if he had intentionally left the chamber before the vote.”

3 days after his speech on 9 February, Mr Singh posted a note on his Facebook page in what some saw as an about-turn from the fiery criticisms he made in Parliament. Now, his online post lauded the “many excellent plans” contained in the White Paper, and Mr Singh urged Singaporeans to “give the government that time” to carry out these plans.

“I felt that many of the things I asked for in my speech did get through to the government and let's hope the actions which will follow will also reflect this openness the government has demonstrated during the debate,” he wrote. “I am confident this will happen.”

However, on 3 March, Mr Singh was again in the news, this time apparently calling on his party to lift its party whip when Parliament votes on “major policies”. [See here.]

“More MPs from the ruling party might have joined in last month's debate on the Population White Paper if this had happened,” the Straits Times reported him as having said. However, Mr Singh said that “[even] if the whip was lifted, he felt the amended motion… would still have been passed.”

Referring to earlier criticisms of his being absent from the vote and not registering his dissent through it, he said, "I feel that this is an unreasonable criticism. Just because I didn't do so, they say I say one thing but do another. Moreover, the party whip wasn't removed, so everyone should know the outcome of the vote."

In other words, Mr Singh seems to say that as long as the party whip is not lifted, what the party leadership decides will hold, especially in a Parliament where the ruling party has such an overwhelming majority of the seats.

Mr Singh is right, of course.

But is having a Whip in place necessarily a bad thing?

When asked (before the debate on the White Paper) if the whip would be lifted for the debate, PAP Whip Gan Kim Yong said, “We would only do so if the subject of debate is a matter of conscience.”

The last 2 times the Whip was lifted was in 2007 (when Parliament voted on the so-called “gay law”, S377A) and in 2010 (on the Maintenance of Parents Bill amendments).

There are several reasons why the practice of the Whip is in place. For example, it is to instil party discipline – that party members toe the party line. It is also to prevent MPs from crossing party lines and voting with other parties with impunity, holding their party leadership ransom, so to speak. The Whip ensures that the message the party (and the government) sends out to the public (and its own party, in fact) on any particular matter or policy is a clear one, and that when all is said and done, everyone (public, party, government) knows the direction in which we will be moving, or in the case of the opposition parties, what the parties’ position is on any particular issue. The PAP has also spoken of its belief in “collective responsibility” when it comes to policy decisions. An example is how it goes about implementing the (mandatory) death penalty where it is not one person who holds the onerous responsibility but the entire Cabinet.

It is for these same reasons that the opposition Workers’ Party decided to appoint its own party Whip – Mr Low Thia Khiang – in 2011, after the WP won 6 seats and had another 2 Non-constituency MPs in Parliament.

Mr Singh’s call for the party Whip to be lifted for voting on “major policies” is a curious one. Contrary to what he suggests, one would think that it is precisely because of “major policies” that the government would want an unequivocal or unambiguous message to be sent out. The party Whip serves this important purpose. Imagine a public confused by what the government’s (or ruling party’s) position on a particular issue is because there is no clarity in the votes cast by its own members.

This is not to say that MPs like Mr Singh, who incidentally was a fomer party deputy Whip himself, are helpless. There are certain things he can do (privately or publicly) to effect changes he wishes to see, or to voice his unhappiness or disapproval over certain things.

Internally, within his party, he could lobby his colleagues in voting out party leaders whom he feels are not adequate, or to seek private dialogues with party leaders (which I am sure Mr Singh does, given that the leader of his GRC team in Ang Mo Kio is also the prime minister). He may also initiate debate within his party on how or when the party Whip should be imposed.

Ultimately, however, if MPs like Mr Singh truly feel that they cannot live with a policy or a decision made by their party or government, then there is always the option of stepping down or stepping out of the party and resign.

While one can appreciate that with the Whip in place, Mr Singh had really no choice – as far as casting his parliamentary vote was concerned, and that absenting himself was the “best option” for him – one would however also question if he should not have the gumption to resign his position if he felt so strongly (as indeed he did, from the strong words he used in his speech) about the White paper. Resignation would be a last resort, one would imagine. But it is nonetheless an option open to Mr Singh.

Since Mr Singh has now lauded the White Paper’s “many excellent plans”, has called on Singaporeans to give the government time, and seems happy about how his views were heard and even accepted by the government, one wonders why he is calling for the Whip to be lifted on occasions.

In short, Mr Singh’s seemingly shifting position on the matter does not reflect well on his conviction, in fact.

“The government listened and decided to amend the 6.9m number,” he said on his Facebook note. “The government agreed to take the views of many MPs and Singaporeans who contributed to the debate. I am glad the government showed flexibility this time round. I know the prime minister will deliver and I am fully behind him on this. I want to thank the Prime Minister for showing this flexibility and we should all give him the full support so that he can work on the plans with his team.”

Why then the need to lift the Whip?

What would it have achieved in this case, given that Mr Singh also said, “People must accept there's party discipline and rules on such matters”?

Perhaps what Mr Singh is saying is that the PAP’s internal communication and feedback process needs improving. Or perhaps Mr Singh is saying that PAP MPs are not consulted enough before policy decisions are made, and they have to express their disagreements or disapproval in Parliament.

Or perhaps what Mr Singh wants is reassurance that voting what he feels is right will not attract reprisals for him and MPs like him from his party. One of the consequences of not toeing the party line is, of course, dismissal from the party – and along with it one’s parliamentary seat and all the benefits of it, including a not ungenerous salary. But such reassurances, if indeed these are what Mr Singh seeks, is a different matter for him and his party to discuss.

What Singaporeans want to see are MPs who can speak their minds, and who have the courage to put their money where their mouths are. At the same time, however, Singaporeans also understand that a government – as a collective - must send a clear signal on where it stands on any matters.

MPs who disagree with their party positions have options, one of which is to resign. It may seem a drastic thing to do but if a policy decision inspires such strong words and sentiments (as Mr Singh expressed in Parliament), then such an action is reasonable.

Would Mr Singh be asking for the Whip to be lifted if Parliament was not also so overwhelmingly filled with PAP MPs?

More importantly, instead of asking for his party Whip to be lifted when voting for “major policies”, Mr Singh should instead ask if he is convicted enough to stand his ground when it comes to the crunch, instead of pointing fingers after the fact.

Some say Mr Singh should have stayed and cast his vote against the White Paper – and accept the consequences from his party – if he truly felt so strongly against the Paper.

I am not inclined to disagree with such a view.

Mr Singh might disagree and say, as he now has, that his views were taken into consideration by the government and PM Lee Hsien Loong and he is satisfied with this, and thus there is no need to resign from the party in protest. But PM Lee made his speech after Mr Singh had spoken, both in Parliament - before the vote.

Referring to the parliamentary debate, Mr Singh wrote online that “it ended quite surprisingly by the prime minister agreeing to change course on the 6.9m population by reducing the government expectation of a future population to something significantly lower than the 6.9m.”

“I am glad the government showed flexibility this time round. I know the prime minister will deliver and I am fully behind him on this. I want to thank the Prime Minister for showing this flexibility and we should all give him the full support so that he can work on the plans with his team.”

So, why didn’t Mr Singh stay in the House and vote in favour of the White Paper, instead of absenting himself, especially after the PM’s explanation which seemed to have assuaged Mr Singh’s concerns and gained Mr Singh’s emphatic approval?

It is rather curious, these twists and turns. Their ends don't meet.

There are other such examples when something becomes a problem when it is Malay and not when it is of another culture. Weddings are another example: Malay weddings are fattening, yet eight course Chinese weddings do not enter the picture. These inconsistencies in understanding should jar our thinking that the problem might not be straightforwardly ‘objective’ in nature. Why is it that fatty foods only become a problem when it is Malay foods? Why are Malay festivals or Malays eating out a problem? This seems to be a reflection of an old prejudice: that Malays are lazy and (by extension) fat.

This prejudice is justified ‘objectively’ as statistically speaking Malays are obese in greater numbers. Statistics however are like a bikini- what they reveal is interesting, but what they hide is fascinating. It is precisely through the use of these statistics that the whole discourse becomes racialized. The National Health Survey 2010 is one major example. If we refer to the executive summary of the survey, we find all manner of problems highlighted by racial categories: Hypertension, high blood pressure, obesity save one: binge drinking. This seems yet another demonstration of cognitive bias; what kind of health problems are highlighted and what are not. However, one may argue against the previous point that binge drinking is much less of a growing problem than obesity. The numbers testify to the problems of an increasingly unhealthy lifestyle: between 2004-2010 alone, the percentage of obesity among men nearly doubled from 6.4% to 12.1%.

Towards the end of the section on obesity, a small blurb suggests that this could be the cause of economic inequality. This is not hard to imagine: people in low paying jobs work longer hours; some like security guards do shift work, which is hardly conducive to exercise. Epidemiologists also suggests other ways economic disparity leads to ill health: for example, being in the lower rungs causes greater stress-inducing cortisol, which causes greater fat storage around the abdominal area. Another side effect of this increased stress could be increased smoking to cope with such stress. Furthermore foods which are ‘high energy density’ are often lower priced and are more affordable and accessible to the poor, in contrast to various health foods and supplements which are more available to the rich. This would mean that the fact we see more Malays as unhealthy could be because of economic situation rather than racial identity.

The absence of the data on class is the fascinating aspect of reality which is obscured. Such a problem is not a technical one, as there are plenty of studies globally which present data based on class. Rather it is ideological as it impacts how the problem of health in Singapore is discussed. With the present racialized framing of data, the discourse becomes about ‘educating’ people on the  consequences or exhortations to change an unhealthy lifestyle/diet/mindset. If a survey based on class divisions revealed great health discrepancies between rich and poor the way which we present and discuss the issues will greatly differ. Issues (mentioned above) of long working hours, high stress and access to quality food will arise. More importantly it would provide an urgent case for a more comprehensive healthcare system, in the light that the poor would be the least insured yet facing more chronic health problems. The way the issue is currently framed severely curtails the discourse on social justice and welfare but merely becomes a tool to confirm deeply held cognitive biases. The problem is without access to data, we cannot compare other possible correlations.

There is a more serious implication to this racialized framing of problems, in that such an approach merely ignores looming problems. The pattern should be self evident now. When there was a housing crisis, many Malays were initially badly affected, becoming homeless and living on beaches. However, we know now the weaknesses of the housing policies and difficulties in providing decent living spaces amidst rising prices and an uncertain economy.  Malays and other minorities were most affected by the influx of migrants many years before a white paper appeared, as the landscape became increasingly unfamiliar and alien. Long before xenophobia became such a compelling cause to rail against, Malays and other minorities have had to struggle with problems of discrimination, stereotyping and prejudice.

We should look at this instance no differently. Over the last few years, there has been an influx of all manner of processed food ranging from desserts to boutique coffee to all kinds of deep fried foods as a result of our open and globalized economy. Partly to accommodate the increase in population, localized town centers have mushroomed to ensure that traffic towards the main city area is reduced. This has inadvertently encouraged consumption and access to the aforementioned processed foods in heartland areas. Encouraged by long working hours and stressful competitive environments, these places constitute a ‘quick fix’, ‘comfort food' or sugar rush which only adds to the problem. With the lack of a comprehensive healthcare system, and rising healthcare costs, this increasingly obesogenic environment is recipe for a catastrophe.

As the problem is defined more broadly, older strategies of facing the problem of health based on race seem archaic and inadequate. Newer, more fundamental solutions need to be explored holistically with reference to real changes on patterns of everyday life, rather than abstract notions and assumptions of culture. The question is whether we let prejudices determine how problems are seen or look beyond these biases for more effective solutions.

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Fadli Fawzi is a blogger who reads, writes and discusses on a wide range of social issues. His writings can be found at daunkesom.wordpress.com.

Both men have also been overworked and underpaid. On average they said they worked 8 to 10 hours a day, seven days a week. On certain occasions they were made to work up to 16 hours. There was no such thing as overtime or extra pay compensation. The company would also impose fines if the workers worked for less than 270 hours or 28 days in a month. Wu related how workers would be given a piece of work to do within a timeframe. If the work was not finished on time, their salaries would be deducted according to the number of hours completion had been delayed. If mistakes were made, no matter how small they were, same punishment – their pay would be deducted.

The men said they were also subjected to verbal abuse and threats by their superiors whenever they raised work-related issues. Complicating matters was the fact that the men did not have any written agreement or contract that would help prove what they’re entitled to.  Everything was done through “verbal agreements”, the two men said.

At one point during the interview with us, Wu rolled up his sleeve to show us a 10 cm scar on his right arm. He became animated at this point and complained that the scar was the result of a burn on his arm due to an accident on the work site.  The older man explained that he continued to work, but had to stop after a while as his arm had started to swell. He went to see their manager but was only given a bandage and was told to continue working. In another work-related accident, Wu said he injured himself when he hit his left hand with a hammer, resulting in it swelling. He asked his manager to be allowed to rest, but his request was denied. “Even a chef can still cook when his hands are chopped off. This injury is nothing,” Wu recalled his manager’s words.

In addition, workers were made to carry out dangerous tasks. Zhu explains one instance when each worker had to carry a 4m steel pipe that weighed 90 kg. He said that he tried negotiating with his manager to ask if two people could carry one pipe but was told that if this were to happen, they would only be paid for half the timing. “It was very dangerous and difficult,” the younger man said.

After deciding that he had had enough of the abuse and exploitation from their bosses, Zhu decided to hand in his resignation letter in August stating he was “fatigued from work”. The employers told him to change the reason to “family difficulties” but threatened that if he were to quit now, he would have “tax obligations”. Thus, he continued working. In November, Zhu, once again, handed in a resignation letter, changing his reason to “family difficulties”, as had been suggested to him. However, his employers still refused and threatened to “make his life difficult”.

On 19 November, the younger man went to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) to make enquiries about resigning, since he was unfamiliar with the law in Singapore. He said he was stopped at the lobby by a staff who asked him why he was at the ministry. Zhu explained his situation and was told to produce a copy of the resignation letter, which he did not have with him since he had already submitted it to his manager. He said the MOM officer  told him to go back and write another one.

The next day Zhu called his manager to ask if his work permit had been cancelled and if the air ticket had been bought. The manager insisted that Zhu should be responsible for buying his own ticket. For Zhu, this was difficult. He had not been paid by the company and had no money. In desperation, Zhu told his manager that he was willing to forgo his unpaid salary if the company paid for this air ticket. “We are from rural areas in China. We want to earn money to feed our family. Every time I get paid, I send money back home,” Zhu, who has a 3-year-old daughter, said.

By this time, Wu also decided he wanted to resign. His boss being “black hearted” and “inhumane” were the trigger points for the older man, he said. Both men then decided to write another resignation letter which they subsequently emailed to their manager.

On 4 December, they went to see the manager with regards to their salary. They were told that food expenses would be deducted for the month of November and early December. The men did not complain. However, after they signed their salary sheet, the manager informed them that S$800 worth of utility bills and S$350 for airfares would be deducted as well. In the end, the men were basically left with nothing. They felt deceived and angry.

The following day, they went to the MOM with their resignation letters, as the officer had asked for earlier. But this time the staff said they needed their salary slips and time sheets as well. MOM also told them to come back only after 10 December.

The workers once again went to their manager to ask for the required documents but their manager told them that “he would not give them the time sheets and salary slips and MOM should get those documents from him instead”.

It was on 6 December that both men took things into their own hands. They climbed the 10-storey cranes at a construction site on Jurong Port Road as a way to show their unhappiness. Authorities tried to coax them into coming down.  We asked why they chose to go up the cranes. “We didn’t know what to do, we were desperate.”  At the end of the day, after six grueling hours, they were promised S$4,000 in total - S$2,000 for their owed wages and another S$2,000 which the police kept, saying it would be given back to them when they returned to China. The men appreciated the police for being “helpful” and that the officers had even “checked if we were okay”.

Nonetheless, they were arrested and subsequently charged in court.

On 21 March, the two men were sentenced to 4 weeks’ jail each for “criminal trespass”.

The Straits Times reported:

Their lawyer Ravinderpal Singh wrote in mitigation that the three places they lived in during the eight months they spent working in Singapore, had "deplorable" conditions.

However, the MOM said in response to The Straits Times questions on Friday that the allegations were false.

A spokesman said MOM inspectors visited the men's last place of residence - a container at Fishery Port Road in Jurong - on Dec 12 and found it complied with "approved housing requirements and were assessed to be satisfactory". "There was regular cleaning of common areas and sanitary facilities and also fogging and spraying and rodent control measures in place," he said. MOM officers spoke to several workers during the visit and none raised any issue with their accommodation.

The workers’ protest atop the 10-storey cranes took place on 6 December. MOM, according to what it said to the Straits Times, inspected one of the 3 places the men had stayed at – their “last place of residence” – only a week later (12 December), by which time one would or could assume that the employer had cleaned up the place, especially after the widespread publicity of the men’s protest in the media.

Also, what about the other 2 places where the men had stayed at? Did MOM visit them? It is unclear if the MOM had also enquired or visited these two other places.

Executive Director of the Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME), Bridget Tan, said:

"There must have been something seriously wrong with the way the workers felt their employer was treating them for them to climb up the cranes and risk their lives. The authorities should take a deeper look at what went wrong."

Unfortunately, it seems that the MOM has closed the book on the matter, and has dismissed the workers’ claims.

“All we want is to go home and spend Chinese New Year with our families,” the men told us. Unfortunately, as events turned out, they did not get to go home for the celebrations.

They now sit in jail in Singapore, paying the price for speaking up.

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Additional reporting by Andrew Loh.

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Below are pictures of one of the places where the two workers had stayed in. We understand that these were shown to the Straits Times which declined to publish or report them. 

[Pictures from Jolovan Wham's Facebook page.]

Few experiences rival gestation and childbirth in physical intensity and impact on health.  Pregnancy and parenthood transform lives radically – offering potential joys but also imposing tremendous burdens, especially when workplace gender discrimination remains rife.  This particularly affects those who lack social support and acceptance, such as poor, disabled or single parents.

It is therefore important to remove structural barriers to parenthood – such as poverty or discrimination against unwed parents – as these might coerce those who otherwise want children to seek abortions instead. At the same time, we must also trust people to make their own decisions about their bodies and their families’ needs. Each person is best placed to understand their own situation – whether that is someone who may be fired or expelled for being pregnant, a woman whose husband is abusive toward her and her children, or a couple who cannot cope with an additional child.

The suggestion by some Members of Parliament to “raise awareness of adoption rather than abortion” presents adoption as an allegedly easy or straightforward substitute for abortion. Promoting adoption as the “better” choice increases the stigma against abortion and pressurises pregnant people to make this choice, ignoring the fact that carrying a child to full term has very different physical, mental and social implications for the patient.

Notably, in Singapore there is a 10-15% rate of postnatal depression, with unplanned pregnancies causing increased risk.  Giving one’s baby up for adoption only exacerbates distress at this difficult time.

This personal choice, which enormously impacts one’s life, must not be appropriated callously by nationalist discourse and framed as a public duty to “make a difference to Singapore's birth rates” or as a social service of “producing more babies for adoption”. The well-being of children, parents and pregnant people – including their mental health – is far more important than improving fertility statistics.

When a patient decides to terminate a pregnancy, being lectured about an ultrasound image or confronted with bullying and inaccurate language like “real-life babies” and “dead children” causes needless psychological harm and is an intrusion on the patient’s right to privacy. Healthcare professionals and counsellors should allow patients to make free and informed choices for their own reasons, not try to persuade them of anything.

Making access to abortion more distressing may produce a marginal increase in birth rates, but at great human and social cost, including to the resulting children.  Children deserve to be raised by people who desire them, not unwilling or unready caregivers, whose family relationships and economic circumstances face increased stress from reluctant parenthood.

Currently, pre-abortion counselling is mandatory only for some women, but not others. There is no counselling for foreigners, rape victims, Singaporeans who have not passed the PSLE or who have three or more children. If they seek an abortion, they get it right away. Why is this so? This policy reeks of eugenics and systematic discrimination, aiming to persuade supposedly socially “desirable” people not to abort, while withholding counselling from others who may very well need guidance to make an informed decision.

All people should have equal access to patient-centred healthcare, including abortion services.  Population engineering and the policing of women’s bodily autonomy in the name of demographic goals go against the principles of equality and human freedom, and cannot be tolerated. We call for healthcare decisions to be made by patients (in consultation with medical advisers) on the basis of their individual needs and aspirations, not judgments about their social status.

The film evokes a burial ground for the dead that is literally bursting with life. Ancient rain trees laden with ferns and vines stand watch like sentries over graves, roots encircle the necks of stone lions, spiders scuttle across their webs, and every surface bristles with ants. The film’s soundtrack is the voice of the woodland: the constant hum of birdsong and the whining throb of cicadas. Shot after shot demonstrates the filmmakers revelling in the sheer beauty of their surroundings, yet the slow-motion panning shots never feel tiresome. It is the ever-changing quality of the light that makes Bukit Brown such an evocative and highly atmosphere place, and McDairmant and Khoo capture it gorgeously. We see light rays shining through the early morning mist and foliage, the sunlight reflecting off wet vegetation after a rainstorm, light streaking through drifts of smoke. Although the graves are hauntingly still, it is evident that the landscape itself is in a state of constant regeneration. The undergrowth creeps back every year to reclaim the graves as part of the land, despite family members’ best efforts to keep the graves neat and tidy.

One of the documentary’s greatest strengths is its quiet observational mode of filming. Eschewing a more political slant, the filmmakers neither narrate nor appear onscreen. Instead, they allow the families of the buried to speak for themselves, voicing their deep sense of duty and connection to the burial ground, as well as their resignation over the impending exhumations. For those of who grew up visiting columbaria to pay occasional respects to grandparents, the interviews are eye-opening: informative about traditional rituals, and documenting a way of life that is quickly passing into history before our eyes.

The interviewed families appear candid, friendly and open onscreen, speaking with natural ease as they explain the significance of rituals such as laying squares of coloured paper on the grave mounds, or how to use red divining horns to see if an ancestor has finished eating the offerings. Apparently, during filming, some people switched to speaking English when they saw McDairmant, who is Scottish, behind the camera because they were anxious for a foreigner to understand why they were carrying out specific rituals.

Interviews were conducted spontaneously and in situ. According to Khoo, who is from Singapore and runs the production company Two Chiefs with McDairmant, she knew some families who would be visiting their ancestor’s graves during Qing Ming and had asked for permission to film them. But after being repeatedly turned down or not getting a response, the filmmakers switched tactics; they decided to wait each morning for families to arrive with their cleaning gear and offerings. “Su-Mae would approach them and sometimes we would run uphill with all our gear, to catch a family that we thought looked interesting,” says McDairmant, who worked as a cameraman for the BBC’s Natural History Unit for many years. They were turned down only once—interestingly, by a younger couple. “We found that most of the older people were not only happy to be filmed, but took pride in explaining the significance of their rites,” says Khoo.

Although the 45-minute film is well worth watching, you would be hard-pressed to find a screening. So far, the film has been shown only once to the public—premiering on 20 January as part of an all-day exhibition, panel and celebration of Bukit Brown. The filmmakers are planning to submit it to various film festivals over the course of this year and see if distributors express interest in picking up the film. By the time you wait to see Bukit Brown Voices, however, it might have transitioned from documentary to archive, the place it captures already a memory.

Qing Ming starts today, and if you visit Bukit Brown, you could well see some of the families and rituals that McDairmant and Khoo capture on film for yourself. This perhaps, is what the filmmakers most want audiences to keep in mind. “Lots of Singaporeans pay money to travel to Cambodia to visit Angkor Wat, for example—it’s beautiful and amazing,” says Khoo. “[But] we have our own little Angkor Wat here in Singapore and an 8-lane highway is going to be built through it. That’s pretty unbelievable, don’t you think?”

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Watch the trailer here: Trailer: Bukit Brown Voices from Two Chiefs on Vimeo.

In almost every notable case where online posters have displayed distasteful or uncalled for behaviour, members of the online community have stepped up to condemn or speak out against such behaviour. And this applies even when it involves attacks on MPs of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) such as Tin Pei Ling. [See here.]

Even when xenophobic views were expressed, the online community called these out and condemned them and the originator of such postings.

In contrast, no MPs have even chided the mainstream media when they fall short of basic standards of propriety or professionalism. [Here is a recent example, "STOMPED", where STOMP apparently stole a photo which did not belong to it.]

Yet, in recent times, the call for regulating the Internet and to rein in such behaviour has grown louder from the government and members of the ruling party, even as they ignore the fact that in that same period, the mainstream media and their affiliates have degenerated into and engaged in worse behaviour – faking a story about MRT doors, using a picture of Muslims in traditional attire taken on Hari Raya for a story on drug addiction, repeatedly sensationalising “news” about foreigners with bad behaviour, etc. Even members of the ruling party have engaged in racist postings and vile behaviour online which its MPs seem to have conveniently ignored. [See here for how SPH's STOMP stokes xenophobic feelings: "STOMP - a cesspool of disgrace to citizen journalism")

But to continue to point fingers at each other is an exercise in futility. Yet, to impose even more regulations would be missing the woods for the trees. The backlash will be that more online practitioners will be more willing to ignore what would be seen as unfair rules for the alternative media, compared to the rules for the mainstream media. An example of such an unfair and discriminatory legislation is allowing the (registered) mainstream media – which is government-controlled - to publish election reports on Cooling-off Day but banning everyone else, including the alternative media, from doing so. Such biased and self-serving legislations can only inspire even more sentiments against the government and the ruling party.

This desperate need of the government to change behaviour seems to be borne out of its desire for things to be neat, prim and proper, set in uniform boxes, stacked up and labelled conveniently, for easy identification and control. Such expectations are, however, the antithesis of what the Internet is all about – a space for the robust and untidy exchange of views, the contestation of opinions, a level field where no one is master or servant, where mere mortals mingle on the same plain as higher mortals. And yes, where emotions can run high and voices can be shrill and unreasonable.

And as in the “real” offline world, there will be those who flout what is “acceptable” societal norms and decorum online. Such things are to be expected – and should be left alone unless real harm is caused.

But let’s be honest with ourselves in the discussion and debate on public discourse, whether online or offline – be honest that the mainstream media need to be freed up, to face real competition in order for it to raise its falling standards, and not – as MP Baey recently did – bury our heads in the sand and praise it to the high heavens, even as it churns out slip-shod reports.

Our media freedom rating internationally has not consistently been in the doldrums for no reason.

And in that honesty in discourse, let us also acknowledge that the Internet – and netizens, commentators, and bloggers – have done good things as well, such as exposing wrongdoings, and raising awareness of various issues, issues which the mainstream media avoid or have avoided for the longest time.

The alternative media space is not squeaky clean (why should it be?). Neither is the mainstream media of the highest standards or quality. To pit one against the other, or to heap praises on one and demonise the other is not going to do anyone any good.

What we should be looking at and asking ourselves is how we can raise standards for both sides without resorting to the anachronistic idea of tightening the noose further through regulation or legislation.

Maybe then we will, in the words of Associate Professor Cherian George, “finally wake up to the idea that the Internet contains all the wonder and weirdness of the world, and we’ll stop reacting to the less pleasant stuff as if it is the end of human civilisation.”

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It is also worth noting that in the Michael Palmer affair, it was the People's Association which named the woman involved:

The report continued:

"There was regular cleaning of common areas and sanitary facilities and also fogging and spraying and rodent control measures in place," he said. MOM officers spoke to several workers during the visit and none raised any issue with their accommodation.”

There are several obvious questions one should ask about the MOM’s statement, questions which the Straits Times reporter, Amelia Tan, seemed to have not asked or seek clarification of. They are, as pointed out by the Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) which provides aid to foreign workers:

1. Why did MOM visit the living quarters of the workers only on 12 December, one week after the men’s protest? How does MOM find it responsible to conclude with such conviction that the workers’ claims were “false” based on one belated inspection?

2. Why did MOM not visit the other two places where the men had stayed at as well? Or did MOM not know about these? HOME, in fact, managed to obtained pictures of the men’s previous place of lodging. How then is MOM apparently oblivious of this?

3. The company which the men worked for had an earlier case of a worker who also went on a protest over salary and living conditions. In fact, that earlier incident was similar to the protest by the two men in December. In July 2011, one of the company’s Chinese construction workers also climbed up a crane at a Changi work site to protest being owed $5,000 in overtime pay, medical expenses and repatriation costs. The worker was later jailed for 5 weeks, but it is unclear if any action was taken against the company for any breach of employment laws. [See here.]

What is also important, as HOME also pointed out, is that by charging and jailing the men, and then so conveniently dismissing their claims and in fact painting them as liars, the MOM has cast aspersions on the men who are, incidentally, in jail and cannot defend themselves against MOM’s charges.

MOM should shed some light on these questions, and the action (or failures) to address the men’s claims properly, and thoroughly, before dismissing them.

Foreign workers’ claims of poor living conditions are not new. They have been highlighted for many years now. There are, of course, improvements. One should not deny this. But when claims of poor conditions arise, we should hold thorough investigations and take those responsible to task.

For example, when the SMRT drivers who went on strike last year made similar claims about poor living conditions, all that happened was that SMRT “acknowledged” these conditions and promised to take “swift action to improve them.”

There were no actions taken against SMRT by the authorities, despite SMRT’s own admission of guilt. Instead, the drivers were all either deported, charged and jailed, or given warnings.

What message does that send?

Yes, it tells foreign workers of the serious consequences to them if they should take similar actions as these strikers. But it also tells employers that they can get away with abusing their workers as well, and workers with genuine grievances may now be cowed into silence.

While Singapore talks of a larger population, and improving and expanding its infrastructure, let us also not forget the foreign men and women who help us achieve these things which then put us on the world map.

It is unconscionable that at this day and age, where we boasts of being one of the richest “first world countries” on earth, that we still allow our foreign workers to live in utterly deplorable conditions.

Inhumane living conditions like this one this writer wrote about 3 months ago: “Hidden slums of Singapore revealed.”

{youtube}NBfwNLUDrCY|600|450|0{/youtube}

This writer visited the dorms again on 29 March 2013, and conditions have remained just as bad. These dormitories have been around for at least two years already.

The Ministry of Manpower surely must be aware of them. If it does not, then one must question its competence.

So, why is the ministry not doing anything about it? Is it hoping for the workers to go on strike? Or is it pretending to not be aware? Or is it turning a blind eye to the atrocious conditions which these men – some 40 to a room – have lived in for so long?

The MOM should not cast aspersions on helpless foreign workers when they make genuine complaints about their living conditions, especially when they are unable to defend themselves. There are enough examples of these deplorable living conditions for MOM to take it seriously, and not dismiss these claims as “false”, especially when its own investigation is found to be wanting.

If the MOM is serious, perhaps it should pay a visit to the row of make-shift dormitories at Kaki Bukit Industrial Terrace, hidden away from public view, and speak to the men there, which number not a few, who are pleading for better living conditions.

Housing 30 or 40 workers to a room is simply unacceptable.

The question is: does MOM agree - and what will it do about it?

READ ALSO: "Abused and exploited - but now in jail".

Few experiences rival gestation and childbirth in physical intensity and impact on health.  Pregnancy and parenthood transform lives radically – offering potential joys but also imposing tremendous burdens, especially when workplace gender discrimination remains rife.  This particularly affects those who lack social support and acceptance, such as poor, disabled or single parents.

It is therefore important to remove structural barriers to parenthood – such as poverty or discrimination against unwed parents – as these might coerce those who otherwise want children to seek abortions instead. At the same time, we must also trust people to make their own decisions about their bodies and their families’ needs. Each person is best placed to understand their own situation – whether that is someone who may be fired or expelled for being pregnant, a woman whose husband is abusive toward her and her children, or a couple who cannot cope with an additional child.

The suggestion by some Members of Parliament to “raise awareness of adoption rather than abortion” presents adoption as an allegedly easy or straightforward substitute for abortion. Promoting adoption as the “better” choice increases the stigma against abortion and pressurises pregnant people to make this choice, ignoring the fact that carrying a child to full term has very different physical, mental and social implications for the patient.

Notably, in Singapore there is a 10-15% rate of postnatal depression, with unplanned pregnancies causing increased risk.  Giving one’s baby up for adoption only exacerbates distress at this difficult time.

This personal choice, which enormously impacts one’s life, must not be appropriated callously by nationalist discourse and framed as a public duty to “make a difference to Singapore's birth rates” or as a social service of “producing more babies for adoption”. The well-being of children, parents and pregnant people – including their mental health – is far more important than improving fertility statistics.

When a patient decides to terminate a pregnancy, being lectured about an ultrasound image or confronted with bullying and inaccurate language like “real-life babies” and “dead children” causes needless psychological harm and is an intrusion on the patient’s right to privacy. Healthcare professionals and counsellors should allow patients to make free and informed choices for their own reasons, not try to persuade them of anything.

Making access to abortion more distressing may produce a marginal increase in birth rates, but at great human and social cost, including to the resulting children.  Children deserve to be raised by people who desire them, not unwilling or unready caregivers, whose family relationships and economic circumstances face increased stress from reluctant parenthood.

Currently, pre-abortion counselling is mandatory only for some women, but not others. There is no counselling for foreigners, rape victims, Singaporeans who have not passed the PSLE or who have three or more children. If they seek an abortion, they get it right away. Why is this so? This policy reeks of eugenics and systematic discrimination, aiming to persuade supposedly socially “desirable” people not to abort, while withholding counselling from others who may very well need guidance to make an informed decision.

All people should have equal access to patient-centred healthcare, including abortion services.  Population engineering and the policing of women’s bodily autonomy in the name of demographic goals go against the principles of equality and human freedom, and cannot be tolerated. We call for healthcare decisions to be made by patients (in consultation with medical advisers) on the basis of their individual needs and aspirations, not judgments about their social status.

The four defendants were made out to be "calling for arms" in their unlawful strike without considering the strong mitigating factors that they were firstly ignorant of the law, they had no recourse to joining a union and finally acted out of sheer desperation that their concerns were not heard despite their having raised them to their superiors.

On first glance, it appears that the DPP is going by the books, where if a crime is committed, the penalty follows automatically without looking at the context of which the crime is committed and whether there are mitigating factors. Such a "flow-chart" approach and mechanical application of the law does not require much thinking and results inevitably in a judgement seemingly lacking in compassion and merely legalistic.

This point is substantiated by the presiding judge acknowledging that it may well be the case that their complaints "could have been better managed and will need to be better addressed by SMRT" but disagree that this proceeding is the right platform to address them.  He also made it clear that those legitimate grouses will not be factored in his sentencing.  Why not?

One can only hope that such instance of divorcing the factual context of the case and insisting on a straitjacket type of prosecutorial decision is an anomaly that will change in future cases with this initiative by the AGC.

Vincent Law

Both men have also been overworked and underpaid. On average they said they worked 8 to 10 hours a day, seven days a week. On certain occasions they were made to work up to 16 hours. There was no such thing as overtime or extra pay compensation. The company would also impose fines if the workers worked for less than 270 hours or 28 days in a month. Wu related how workers would be given a piece of work to do within a timeframe. If the work was not finished on time, their salaries would be deducted according to the number of hours completion had been delayed. If mistakes were made, no matter how small they were, same punishment – their pay would be deducted.

The men said they were also subjected to verbal abuse and threats by their superiors whenever they raised work-related issues. Complicating matters was the fact that the men did not have any written agreement or contract that would help prove what they’re entitled to.  Everything was done through “verbal agreements”, the two men said.

At one point during the interview with us, Wu rolled up his sleeve to show us a 10 cm scar on his right arm. He became animated at this point and complained that the scar was the result of a burn on his arm due to an accident on the work site.  The older man explained that he continued to work, but had to stop after a while as his arm had started to swell. He went to see their manager but was only given a bandage and was told to continue working. In another work-related accident, Wu said he injured himself when he hit his left hand with a hammer, resulting in it swelling. He asked his manager to be allowed to rest, but his request was denied. “Even a chef can still cook when his hands are chopped off. This injury is nothing,” Wu recalled his manager’s words.

In addition, workers were made to carry out dangerous tasks. Zhu explains one instance when each worker had to carry a 4m steel pipe that weighed 90 kg. He said that he tried negotiating with his manager to ask if two people could carry one pipe but was told that if this were to happen, they would only be paid for half the timing. “It was very dangerous and difficult,” the younger man said.

After deciding that he had had enough of the abuse and exploitation from their bosses, Zhu decided to hand in his resignation letter in August stating he was “fatigued from work”. The employers told him to change the reason to “family difficulties” but threatened that if he were to quit now, he would have “tax obligations”. Thus, he continued working. In November, Zhu, once again, handed in a resignation letter, changing his reason to “family difficulties”, as had been suggested to him. However, his employers still refused and threatened to “make his life difficult”.

On 19 November, the younger man went to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) to make enquiries about resigning, since he was unfamiliar with the law in Singapore. He said he was stopped at the lobby by a staff who asked him why he was at the ministry. Zhu explained his situation and was told to produce a copy of the resignation letter, which he did not have with him since he had already submitted it to his manager. He said the MOM officer  told him to go back and write another one.

The next day Zhu called his manager to ask if his work permit had been cancelled and if the air ticket had been bought. The manager insisted that Zhu should be responsible for buying his own ticket. For Zhu, this was difficult. He had not been paid by the company and had no money. In desperation, Zhu told his manager that he was willing to forgo his unpaid salary if the company paid for this air ticket. “We are from rural areas in China. We want to earn money to feed our family. Every time I get paid, I send money back home,” Zhu, who has a 3-year-old daughter, said.

By this time, Wu also decided he wanted to resign. His boss being “black hearted” and “inhumane” were the trigger points for the older man, he said. Both men then decided to write another resignation letter which they subsequently emailed to their manager.

On 4 December, they went to see the manager with regards to their salary. They were told that food expenses would be deducted for the month of November and early December. The men did not complain. However, after they signed their salary sheet, the manager informed them that S$800 worth of utility bills and S$350 for airfares would be deducted as well. In the end, the men were basically left with nothing. They felt deceived and angry.

The following day, they went to the MOM with their resignation letters, as the officer had asked for earlier. But this time the staff said they needed their salary slips and time sheets as well. MOM also told them to come back only after 10 December.

The workers once again went to their manager to ask for the required documents but their manager told them that “he would not give them the time sheets and salary slips and MOM should get those documents from him instead”.

It was on 6 December that both men took things into their own hands. They climbed the 10-storey cranes at a construction site on Jurong Port Road as a way to show their unhappiness. Authorities tried to coax them into coming down.  We asked why they chose to go up the cranes. “We didn’t know what to do, we were desperate.”  At the end of the day, after six grueling hours, they were promised S$4,000 in total - S$2,000 for their owed wages and another S$2,000 which the police kept, saying it would be given back to them when they returned to China. The men appreciated the police for being “helpful” and that the officers had even “checked if we were okay”.

Nonetheless, they were arrested and subsequently charged in court.

On 21 March, the two men were sentenced to 4 weeks’ jail each for “criminal trespass”.

The Straits Times reported:

Their lawyer Ravinderpal Singh wrote in mitigation that the three places they lived in during the eight months they spent working in Singapore, had "deplorable" conditions.

However, the MOM said in response to The Straits Times questions on Friday that the allegations were false.

A spokesman said MOM inspectors visited the men's last place of residence - a container at Fishery Port Road in Jurong - on Dec 12 and found it complied with "approved housing requirements and were assessed to be satisfactory". "There was regular cleaning of common areas and sanitary facilities and also fogging and spraying and rodent control measures in place," he said. MOM officers spoke to several workers during the visit and none raised any issue with their accommodation.

The workers’ protest atop the 10-storey cranes took place on 6 December. MOM, according to what it said to the Straits Times, inspected one of the 3 places the men had stayed at – their “last place of residence” – only a week later (12 December), by which time one would or could assume that the employer had cleaned up the place, especially after the widespread publicity of the men’s protest in the media.

Also, what about the other 2 places where the men had stayed at? Did MOM visit them? It is unclear if the MOM had also enquired or visited these two other places.

Executive Director of the Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME), Bridget Tan, said:

"There must have been something seriously wrong with the way the workers felt their employer was treating them for them to climb up the cranes and risk their lives. The authorities should take a deeper look at what went wrong."

Unfortunately, it seems that the MOM has closed the book on the matter, and has dismissed the workers’ claims.

“All we want is to go home and spend Chinese New Year with our families,” the men told us. Unfortunately, as events turned out, they did not get to go home for the celebrations.

They now sit in jail in Singapore, paying the price for speaking up.

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Additional reporting by Andrew Loh.

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Below are pictures of one of the places where the two workers had stayed in. We understand that these were shown to the Straits Times which declined to publish or report them. 

[Pictures from Jolovan Wham's Facebook page.]

The film evokes a burial ground for the dead that is literally bursting with life. Ancient rain trees laden with ferns and vines stand watch like sentries over graves, roots encircle the necks of stone lions, spiders scuttle across their webs, and every surface bristles with ants. The film’s soundtrack is the voice of the woodland: the constant hum of birdsong and the whining throb of cicadas. Shot after shot demonstrates the filmmakers revelling in the sheer beauty of their surroundings, yet the slow-motion panning shots never feel tiresome. It is the ever-changing quality of the light that makes Bukit Brown such an evocative and highly atmosphere place, and McDairmant and Khoo capture it gorgeously. We see light rays shining through the early morning mist and foliage, the sunlight reflecting off wet vegetation after a rainstorm, light streaking through drifts of smoke. Although the graves are hauntingly still, it is evident that the landscape itself is in a state of constant regeneration. The undergrowth creeps back every year to reclaim the graves as part of the land, despite family members’ best efforts to keep the graves neat and tidy.

One of the documentary’s greatest strengths is its quiet observational mode of filming. Eschewing a more political slant, the filmmakers neither narrate nor appear onscreen. Instead, they allow the families of the buried to speak for themselves, voicing their deep sense of duty and connection to the burial ground, as well as their resignation over the impending exhumations. For those of who grew up visiting columbaria to pay occasional respects to grandparents, the interviews are eye-opening: informative about traditional rituals, and documenting a way of life that is quickly passing into history before our eyes.

The interviewed families appear candid, friendly and open onscreen, speaking with natural ease as they explain the significance of rituals such as laying squares of coloured paper on the grave mounds, or how to use red divining horns to see if an ancestor has finished eating the offerings. Apparently, during filming, some people switched to speaking English when they saw McDairmant, who is Scottish, behind the camera because they were anxious for a foreigner to understand why they were carrying out specific rituals.

Interviews were conducted spontaneously and in situ. According to Khoo, who is from Singapore and runs the production company Two Chiefs with McDairmant, she knew some families who would be visiting their ancestor’s graves during Qing Ming and had asked for permission to film them. But after being repeatedly turned down or not getting a response, the filmmakers switched tactics; they decided to wait each morning for families to arrive with their cleaning gear and offerings. “Su-Mae would approach them and sometimes we would run uphill with all our gear, to catch a family that we thought looked interesting,” says McDairmant, who worked as a cameraman for the BBC’s Natural History Unit for many years. They were turned down only once—interestingly, by a younger couple. “We found that most of the older people were not only happy to be filmed, but took pride in explaining the significance of their rites,” says Khoo.

Although the 45-minute film is well worth watching, you would be hard-pressed to find a screening. So far, the film has been shown only once to the public—premiering on 20 January as part of an all-day exhibition, panel and celebration of Bukit Brown. The filmmakers are planning to submit it to various film festivals over the course of this year and see if distributors express interest in picking up the film. By the time you wait to see Bukit Brown Voices, however, it might have transitioned from documentary to archive, the place it captures already a memory.

Qing Ming starts today, and if you visit Bukit Brown, you could well see some of the families and rituals that McDairmant and Khoo capture on film for yourself. This perhaps, is what the filmmakers most want audiences to keep in mind. “Lots of Singaporeans pay money to travel to Cambodia to visit Angkor Wat, for example—it’s beautiful and amazing,” says Khoo. “[But] we have our own little Angkor Wat here in Singapore and an 8-lane highway is going to be built through it. That’s pretty unbelievable, don’t you think?”

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Watch the trailer here: Trailer: Bukit Brown Voices from Two Chiefs on Vimeo.

The report continued:

"There was regular cleaning of common areas and sanitary facilities and also fogging and spraying and rodent control measures in place," he said. MOM officers spoke to several workers during the visit and none raised any issue with their accommodation.”

There are several obvious questions one should ask about the MOM’s statement, questions which the Straits Times reporter, Amelia Tan, seemed to have not asked or seek clarification of. They are, as pointed out by the Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) which provides aid to foreign workers:

1. Why did MOM visit the living quarters of the workers only on 12 December, one week after the men’s protest? How does MOM find it responsible to conclude with such conviction that the workers’ claims were “false” based on one belated inspection?

2. Why did MOM not visit the other two places where the men had stayed at as well? Or did MOM not know about these? HOME, in fact, managed to obtained pictures of the men’s previous place of lodging. How then is MOM apparently oblivious of this?

3. The company which the men worked for had an earlier case of a worker who also went on a protest over salary and living conditions. In fact, that earlier incident was similar to the protest by the two men in December. In July 2011, one of the company’s Chinese construction workers also climbed up a crane at a Changi work site to protest being owed $5,000 in overtime pay, medical expenses and repatriation costs. The worker was later jailed for 5 weeks, but it is unclear if any action was taken against the company for any breach of employment laws. [See here.]

What is also important, as HOME also pointed out, is that by charging and jailing the men, and then so conveniently dismissing their claims and in fact painting them as liars, the MOM has cast aspersions on the men who are, incidentally, in jail and cannot defend themselves against MOM’s charges.

MOM should shed some light on these questions, and the action (or failures) to address the men’s claims properly, and thoroughly, before dismissing them.

Foreign workers’ claims of poor living conditions are not new. They have been highlighted for many years now. There are, of course, improvements. One should not deny this. But when claims of poor conditions arise, we should hold thorough investigations and take those responsible to task.

For example, when the SMRT drivers who went on strike last year made similar claims about poor living conditions, all that happened was that SMRT “acknowledged” these conditions and promised to take “swift action to improve them.”

There were no actions taken against SMRT by the authorities, despite SMRT’s own admission of guilt. Instead, the drivers were all either deported, charged and jailed, or given warnings.

What message does that send?

Yes, it tells foreign workers of the serious consequences to them if they should take similar actions as these strikers. But it also tells employers that they can get away with abusing their workers as well, and workers with genuine grievances may now be cowed into silence.

While Singapore talks of a larger population, and improving and expanding its infrastructure, let us also not forget the foreign men and women who help us achieve these things which then put us on the world map.

It is unconscionable that at this day and age, where we boasts of being one of the richest “first world countries” on earth, that we still allow our foreign workers to live in utterly deplorable conditions.

Inhumane living conditions like this one this writer wrote about 3 months ago: “Hidden slums of Singapore revealed.”

{youtube}NBfwNLUDrCY|600|450|0{/youtube}

This writer visited the dorms again on 29 March 2013, and conditions have remained just as bad. These dormitories have been around for at least two years already.

The Ministry of Manpower surely must be aware of them. If it does not, then one must question its competence.

So, why is the ministry not doing anything about it? Is it hoping for the workers to go on strike? Or is it pretending to not be aware? Or is it turning a blind eye to the atrocious conditions which these men – some 40 to a room – have lived in for so long?

The MOM should not cast aspersions on helpless foreign workers when they make genuine complaints about their living conditions, especially when they are unable to defend themselves. There are enough examples of these deplorable living conditions for MOM to take it seriously, and not dismiss these claims as “false”, especially when its own investigation is found to be wanting.

If the MOM is serious, perhaps it should pay a visit to the row of make-shift dormitories at Kaki Bukit Industrial Terrace, hidden away from public view, and speak to the men there, which number not a few, who are pleading for better living conditions.

Housing 30 or 40 workers to a room is simply unacceptable.

The question is: does MOM agree - and what will it do about it?

READ ALSO: "Abused and exploited - but now in jail".

It announced in March this year that it is introducing a new “self-classification” scheme for the arts which will take effect from 2014. This new classification scheme has two-tiers, as the Straits Times reported it [emphasis mine]:

First-tier licensees can self- classify performances that are suitable for a general audience, including children. But they will have to submit performances with potentially sensitive content - such as race, religion and politics - to MDA for classification.

To ensure they exercise responsible self-classification, they will have to provide a $1,000 performance bond signed by a guarantor, although an upfront cash payment is not necessary.

Second-tier licensees are not subject to the $1,000 bond. They can also self-classify performances up to the highest rating, R18, as well as performances that deal with racial, religious or political content.

The licences are valid for one year, and groups can stage as many self-classified performances as they want during this period without paying licensing fees for such performances.

The licence is renewable subject to an annual review, in which the MDA will evaluate whether licensees comply with regulations and accurately classify performances.

In a nutshell, it is control at a distance but still control, nonetheless. The State allows you to label your own works – but it can punish you (by withdrawing funding) if you label it inaccurately, according to its regulations. And the ultimate judge of that, one presumes, would be the minister himself.

The ban on funding for “projects which are incompatible with the core values promoted by the Government and society or disparage the Government” still stand as well.

So it is quite curious to hear the latest remarks of the minister in charge of the arts.

Mr Lawrence Wong, Acting Minister for Culture, Community and Youth, said on 8 April 2013, that the government's policy on censorship "is evolving and moving away from censorship towards one of classification and self-regulation."

"Rather than to say these are OB markers and don't touch them whether it's politics, race or religion and say 'thou shall not touch it', I think we should move away from that and we should move to a situation where we have a dialogue on what the artist would like to convey even if it's a provocative issue on politics, race or religion and then have a conversation..." - Lawrence Wong, 8 April 2013. (CNA)

I think Singaporeans will, by and large, welcome the minister’s remarks. The arts community would certainly welcome dialogue with the authorities too. This has been something it’s been calling for anyway. But this so-called "self-regulation" is not really self-regulation if, as it is, the withdrawal of NAC funding is used as a tool to get the groups to conform.

Mr Wong’s remarks comes a month after the government announced the new two-tiered classification scheme. The way the government has gone about installing restrictions and imposing censorship on the arts community, using funding as a threat for the community to conform to what the government expects, smacks of highhandedness which, sadly, has created a certain sense of distrust of the authorities. Why speak of having or being interested in dialogues with the community while wielding the big stick? How does one have a conversation in such a context?

Be that as it may, the government should – finally – engage the community with not only an open mind but also an open heart. But more importantly, it should be willing to take some (political) risks and show more support for our artists and their craft – and quit trying to always muzzle them and beat them into submission. A little trust will go a long way. The government should step out of its comfort zone of conveniently invoking this mysterious “core values promoted by the Government and society” to justify the stiffling status quo.

This is a major cop-out, especially when these so-called “core values” are ambiguous, if they exist at all.

Arts is such that at some point, in some areas, some people will be offended, outraged, enraged, disgusted, by what artists put out there. That is how it should be for one of arts’ aims is to provoke so that conversations can be had, imaginations stirred, and new possibilities envisioned.

We should widen the threshold for people to be challenged in their beliefs and the norms of society questioned. We should not shy away from looking directly into our sensitivities – our races, the colour of our skin, the gods we believe in, or the political parties or politics we subscribe to.

“I sincerely feel that the funding guidelines regarding our so-called “core values” and “disparaging government institutions” – the very guidelines that lead to the punitive cuts to W!LD RICE - have no place in a truly democratic society,” Ivan Heng, founder and artistic director of W!ld Rice, said in a recent Facebook post.

It is time for the government to grow some backbone and stand up for the arts community – and take some risks in allowing it free rein, even if some quarters of our society feel we are not ready for this and want the present state of affairs to be preserved.

The government’s role should be to protect the space artists operate in, and not to step into that space itself to dictate how artists should use that space.

Yes, in a sense that will require some courage from the government, but if it is willing to do so, it may yet be surprised that our society is able to accept being provoked by the arts.

In fact, it is time our society be allowed to do that.

Mr Wong should not assume the nanny role his predecessors did. He should instead see his role as one which frees what they have caged.

As for those “core values”, ditch them.

“Everyone has a right to be delighted by, indifferent to or repulsed by art. But no one has the right to deny another the right to decide for his or her self.” – A Manifesto For The Arts.

After Singapore became independent, there was a huge drive to build the nation. Of course, we were a new country just separated from Malaysia, we had to navigate a new and uncertain road, galvanize ourselves, forge a new identity, and find a way to survive and grow. We’ve all sat through this history lesson in school, and some of us have even lived it in real life.

Nationalism became a big part of molding the new Singaporean. Efforts that promoted national identity were launched, of which these are but a few examples: campaigns that told us we were Singaporean first, Chinese, Malay and Indian second; Chinese being asked to jiang huayi [speak mandarin] over their dialects; the entire country trumpeting National Day songs year after year and National Education being introduced to schools. ‘We are Singapore-Singapore-re-ans!’ we chorused in unison.

We were also told that we were number one in many things: from our business environment to our airport to our children’s math scores.

(For an interesting list of Singapore’s rankings, refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_rankings_of_Singapore, but please take this with a pinch of salt.)

Foreigners (mainly westerners) who dared to criticize Singapore, whether our education, our culture, our media or our appropriated form of democracy, have been censured for trying to impose their Western ideas and values on us and clearly not understanding just how uniquely Singaporean we are. No one, not even the most powerful countries in the world, was going to tell the Lion City what to do or how to do it. And foreigners who praised Singapore were reported on glowingly in the mainstream media as if to say, ‘See, this shows that we have got it right.’

Some of this nationalism has been great for us, even necessary—Singaporeans are now a confident, well-educated lot, with a strong sense of who we are.

But there’s a flip side—a lot of this nationalism was presented using propaganda—telling only one side of the story and omitting other views in order to shape our attitudes and beliefs in a concerted direction that facilitated ‘nation building’.

As a result, we’re sometimes also arrogant, intolerant, have an overly rigid sense of ‘the Singapore way’, are prone to self-congratulations, and can be somewhat myopic in our worldview.

We’re used to things working smoothly, we’re comfortable in our Singaporean community, we’re used to thinking its our way or the highway. We’re used to being a success story. We don’t take criticism well.

When the current wave of difficult social and economic conditions descended on us, they triggered the ugly face of nationalism. Pride turned into hatred; a sense of identity into ‘you are not one of us’, and confidence into superiority, in many instances.

So maybe our government needs to revisit some of this patriotism. Tone it down, climb down from the high ground and drop the propaganda—whether in the obvious form of posters, taglines, songs, campaigns, exhibitions or in its more insidious manipulation of the media.

Because while loving one’s country is always a good thing, maybe we have been taught to love our country a little too much for our own good.

The violence of the crime shook me with a ferocity that I have never quite forgotten. Shepard and I had been almost the same age at the time. And while I'd never hidden the fact that I was gay, the urgent realisation that such hatred for queer people exists is what pushed me, unequivocally, out of the closet for good. The image of Shepard that I stared at online for hours remains embedded in my memory today; it reminds me of why I must exist, visibly, as a queer person: because there are simply too many of us who can’t.

Tonight’s judgment upholding 377A has not just made me angry; it has literally and justifiably distressed me. I am distressed about what this judgment says about our courts, about what it implies for my friends who are gay and male, about what it says about this country and about how it affects my relationship with my country-of-birth.

The lead-up to this court case was nothing new: religious leaders encroaching upon secular society, political leaders hurting their behinds on fences, slippery-slope arguments pivoting the fate of an entire nation’s moral fabric upon whether or not the sex lives of homosexual men continue to remain criminalized – a claim so baseless that it would be laughable if the inanity of its constant regurgitation was not so mind-numbing. Oh, and let’s not forget the 377A-suporters who petitioned the government to invest taxpayer money into “conducting a comprehensive study into the ill-effects of promoting homosexuality in culture”. Er. Right. Because honest socio-cultural inquiry involves conducting a “comprehensive study”  based on conclusions one has already come to.

If this is the level of discourse Singapore is leaning towards, then our aspirations to become a first-world nation –a nation of compassionate hearts, critical minds and progressive debate– is doomed.

And if the ill-will and ignorance propagated against queer people online prior to this court case is not reason enough to repeal 377A, I don’t know what is. The fact that a senior pastor responded to the debate with what sounded pretty much like a battle-cry, set alarm bells off in many heads: He told his church that “we must not be oblivious to our responsibility as an army to push back the powers of darkness”, that the church “must get herself into battle footing, and be battle-ready”, that “the first salvo was fired”, that “churches are beginning to mobilise themselves”, that “the war will be winnable” and that “the church will arise victorious”.

If one religious community had raised this "war-cry" against another, I am pretty sure that the law would have intervened in half the time it took him to take the incriminating evidence of his own violent imagination out of his post. But because it was a rally-cry against equal rights for homosexuals, no action has been taken and his “apology” has seemed to suffice. Double-standards, much?

During the Shepard case, the murderers’ lawyers claimed “gay panic” in defense of the crime, as if it was a justifiable reason to torture and murder someone. Even after they were found guilty, it took a decade of politics following Shepard's tragic death for Wyoming to finally pass a hate crime bill pertaining to sexual orientation. Even in those final proceedings, Republican Party member Virginia Foxx, in an effort to block it, claimed that Shepard’s death being called a “hate crime” was a hoax.

Does Singapore need a similar tragedy to occur for our courts to understand the importance and role of the law in relation to minority communities? Does Singapore need a similar tragedy to occur in order for us to abolish laws that actively and/or tangentially persecute specific groups of people?

If all people are not afforded equality under the law, then the law exists solely to serve the ideologies of a select few.  By retaining this law on grounds that “the courts’ power to intervene can only be exercised with established principles” and that the issues in this present case “is not one which… justifies heavy-handed judicial intervention”, what the court is essentially saying is that its job encompasses waiting for tides to change before it officiates any “difficult” decisions… even if it believes in the fairness of those decisions. Is it therefore adopting the role of an administrator of the status quo rather than the role of an institution that stands for justice?  If this is the case, I am not sure what the courts are there for, because from my experience, the status quo tends to take care of itself just fine.

One of the repeated arguments reiterated by supporters of the status quo was the idea that repealing 377A will lead to the destruction of the basic family unit and the moral fabric of society. That is where conservatives and I have something in common: the idea of family is important to me. And I believe that anything powerful enough to destroy families or demean the moral fabric of society needs to be dealt with. Let me give you a few examples:

I have a friend who was beaten up by his father when he came out as gay, and subsequently sent to another country. I have another who was dragged across the floor by her hair and thrown out of the house. Late last year, the media covered a story about a group of public bus-drivers in uniform who hurled derogatory words at a transgendered woman for simply existing in a public space. A few months ago, the papers covered a story about a woman who was gang-raped in an effort to "correct" her sexuality.

This is what breaks up family units and destroys the moral fabric of our society; beliefs – cultural or otherwise -  that demonise, stigmatise, alienate and harm fellow human beings. Not people fighting to repeal an archaic colonial statute that labels people criminals based on who they have consensual sex with. Take it from first-hand experience, if you must: When I was twelve, I was “exorcised” against my will; a seven-hour-long ordeal intended to cast “lesbian demons” out of my body. Four years later, when my mother found out I was dating a girl, she informed me that I was going to hell.

These stories are all around us. If you have not seen or heard them, then you are going out of your way to not see or hear them. And if the court is telling us that legally-induced stigma does not add to already rampant culturally-induced stigma, then it is practising denial, and not justice.

The trouble is that 377A is not just about criminalisation of homosexual sex. It is a symbol that says, yeah, it's legitimate, based on sexual orientation, to deny a graduate a teaching job, to deny a teenager a role model on television, to tell someone that they are less of a legitimate human being. It is sending a message to the public, telling them that it is ok to label someone else not of your sexual orientation a faggot, dyke, ah qua, sinner, deviant, sick because technically, they should be in jail anyway. It is a symbol that says it is legitimate for religious leaders to position satire as fact and demonise an entire community by claiming that gay men want to "sodomise your sons". It validates and is rooted in the very same violence that drives gay teens to suicide, drives wedges between parents and children, leads to pretend marriages that end in shambles. It is a statute that effectively institutionalises inequality.

Dear High Court: I would like my male, gay friends to not be criminalized under my country’s “justice” system. I would like to dispense with a law that institutionalises discrimination against LGBT people in secular society. I would like the homophobia that 337A helps perpetuate to not end in me or anyone I love being bullied, beat up, called names, sexually assaulted, dismissed from their jobs. I would like to live in a country that values families, children and general humanity enough to understand that the discrimination 377A perpetuates does not sit well in a society “based on justice and equality”.

Dear High Court: I would like for all this to happen before it takes a tragedy to open our eyes to the fact that discrimination against homosexual people is not the mark of a “kinder and gentler society” and not at all a symbolic gesture of “My Singapore”.

Dear High Court: I am not prepared to wait for "democratic change" to occur at such a cost. And when it comes to justice, I am not prepared to wait at all.

The four defendants were made out to be "calling for arms" in their unlawful strike without considering the strong mitigating factors that they were firstly ignorant of the law, they had no recourse to joining a union and finally acted out of sheer desperation that their concerns were not heard despite their having raised them to their superiors.

On first glance, it appears that the DPP is going by the books, where if a crime is committed, the penalty follows automatically without looking at the context of which the crime is committed and whether there are mitigating factors. Such a "flow-chart" approach and mechanical application of the law does not require much thinking and results inevitably in a judgement seemingly lacking in compassion and merely legalistic.

This point is substantiated by the presiding judge acknowledging that it may well be the case that their complaints "could have been better managed and will need to be better addressed by SMRT" but disagree that this proceeding is the right platform to address them.  He also made it clear that those legitimate grouses will not be factored in his sentencing.  Why not?

One can only hope that such instance of divorcing the factual context of the case and insisting on a straitjacket type of prosecutorial decision is an anomaly that will change in future cases with this initiative by the AGC.

Vincent Law

It announced in March this year that it is introducing a new “self-classification” scheme for the arts which will take effect from 2014. This new classification scheme has two-tiers, as the Straits Times reported it [emphasis mine]:

First-tier licensees can self- classify performances that are suitable for a general audience, including children. But they will have to submit performances with potentially sensitive content - such as race, religion and politics - to MDA for classification.

To ensure they exercise responsible self-classification, they will have to provide a $1,000 performance bond signed by a guarantor, although an upfront cash payment is not necessary.

Second-tier licensees are not subject to the $1,000 bond. They can also self-classify performances up to the highest rating, R18, as well as performances that deal with racial, religious or political content.

The licences are valid for one year, and groups can stage as many self-classified performances as they want during this period without paying licensing fees for such performances.

The licence is renewable subject to an annual review, in which the MDA will evaluate whether licensees comply with regulations and accurately classify performances.

In a nutshell, it is control at a distance but still control, nonetheless. The State allows you to label your own works – but it can punish you (by withdrawing funding) if you label it inaccurately, according to its regulations. And the ultimate judge of that, one presumes, would be the minister himself.

The ban on funding for “projects which are incompatible with the core values promoted by the Government and society or disparage the Government” still stand as well.

So it is quite curious to hear the latest remarks of the minister in charge of the arts.

Mr Lawrence Wong, Acting Minister for Culture, Community and Youth, said on 8 April 2013, that the government's policy on censorship "is evolving and moving away from censorship towards one of classification and self-regulation."

"Rather than to say these are OB markers and don't touch them whether it's politics, race or religion and say 'thou shall not touch it', I think we should move away from that and we should move to a situation where we have a dialogue on what the artist would like to convey even if it's a provocative issue on politics, race or religion and then have a conversation..." - Lawrence Wong, 8 April 2013. (CNA)

I think Singaporeans will, by and large, welcome the minister’s remarks. The arts community would certainly welcome dialogue with the authorities too. This has been something it’s been calling for anyway. But this so-called "self-regulation" is not really self-regulation if, as it is, the withdrawal of NAC funding is used as a tool to get the groups to conform.

Mr Wong’s remarks comes a month after the government announced the new two-tiered classification scheme. The way the government has gone about installing restrictions and imposing censorship on the arts community, using funding as a threat for the community to conform to what the government expects, smacks of highhandedness which, sadly, has created a certain sense of distrust of the authorities. Why speak of having or being interested in dialogues with the community while wielding the big stick? How does one have a conversation in such a context?

Be that as it may, the government should – finally – engage the community with not only an open mind but also an open heart. But more importantly, it should be willing to take some (political) risks and show more support for our artists and their craft – and quit trying to always muzzle them and beat them into submission. A little trust will go a long way. The government should step out of its comfort zone of conveniently invoking this mysterious “core values promoted by the Government and society” to justify the stiffling status quo.

This is a major cop-out, especially when these so-called “core values” are ambiguous, if they exist at all.

Arts is such that at some point, in some areas, some people will be offended, outraged, enraged, disgusted, by what artists put out there. That is how it should be for one of arts’ aims is to provoke so that conversations can be had, imaginations stirred, and new possibilities envisioned.

We should widen the threshold for people to be challenged in their beliefs and the norms of society questioned. We should not shy away from looking directly into our sensitivities – our races, the colour of our skin, the gods we believe in, or the political parties or politics we subscribe to.

“I sincerely feel that the funding guidelines regarding our so-called “core values” and “disparaging government institutions” – the very guidelines that lead to the punitive cuts to W!LD RICE - have no place in a truly democratic society,” Ivan Heng, founder and artistic director of W!ld Rice, said in a recent Facebook post.

It is time for the government to grow some backbone and stand up for the arts community – and take some risks in allowing it free rein, even if some quarters of our society feel we are not ready for this and want the present state of affairs to be preserved.

The government’s role should be to protect the space artists operate in, and not to step into that space itself to dictate how artists should use that space.

Yes, in a sense that will require some courage from the government, but if it is willing to do so, it may yet be surprised that our society is able to accept being provoked by the arts.

In fact, it is time our society be allowed to do that.

Mr Wong should not assume the nanny role his predecessors did. He should instead see his role as one which frees what they have caged.

As for those “core values”, ditch them.

“Everyone has a right to be delighted by, indifferent to or repulsed by art. But no one has the right to deny another the right to decide for his or her self.” – A Manifesto For The Arts.

How is the line to be drawn between what is a crime and what is not?

Criminal lawyers speak of the two elements of harm and culpability. We are concerned here only with the first – criminal activity must entail some sort of recognizable and more or less tangible harm to others. The criminal law declares it to be a crime, as notice to all that if anyone wishes nonetheless to engage in them, there will be consequences. The rules of criminal procedure and evidence prescribe the manner in which someone is to be prosecuted and found guilty of a crime.

Ultimately, the rules of sentencing and punishment govern how the criminal offender is to be punished. The reason for criminal punishment has been variously explained as incapacitation, deterrence and rehabilitation of the offender, deterrence of would-be offenders, and satisfaction of the victim and of the public.

Does 377A match up?

Just how far 377A is from this model of criminality is striking.

The government has been strangely silent about the harm that 377A is intended to prevent. Indeed consistent statements over a number of years from the highest officials of the land lead any reasonable observer to think that the government no longer believes, if indeed it did before, that the sort of activity contemplated by 377A is harmful at all. If corroboration were required, it lies in the repeated assurances of the government that 377A will not be enforced – apparently because there is no harm to be prevented, no offender to be rehabilitated, no potential offender to be deterred, and no victim to be satisfied.

One might, of course, disagree with the government’s position on the harmfulness of 377A activity, but once that position is taken, how can it be right for 377A activity to remain a crime? The fact that “public feedback” had been “emotional, divided and strongly expressed” is interesting, but surely not the end of the matter – for informed lawmaking must critically examine why there is such a difference of opinion.

Those who seek the repeal of 377A have rather less to explain – if it is the official position that the activity concerned is not harmful, or sufficiently harmful to require penal consequences, it does seem to follow that it ought no longer to be a crime. Those who advocate the retention of 377A are in a more difficult position, for any convincing argument for their view must rest on a belief which is contrary to the implicit official one – that 377A activity does indeed involve a significant enough harm.

The government’s decision to retain 377A in the light of its rejection of the principle argument for its retention – that of harm to the community – is surprising.

It was not retained because it has any merit in itself, or because the government buys into the arguments of those seeking its retention. It was left in the Penal Code because of a desire not to offend those who seek its retention.

Yet the management of activity which does not really harm but merely offend ought surely to involve a balance of interests – between the interests of those who want to engage in the activity and those who are offended by others engaging in it.

How do the advocates of retention benefit by leaving 377A in the books? Not much at all – for the “prohibition” will not be enforced, people will continue to engage that activity and they will, presumably, continue to be offended.

The power of symbolism?

But would the mere existence of 377A not be a needed symbol, in their view, of disapproval?

Perhaps, but what a tattered and confused symbol it will be – there is not to be, and has never been, such a symbol for “gross indecency” between two women, nor is there any for “gross indecency” between a man and another man who has been sexually reassigned surgically as a woman, and what one might have thought to be a far less controversial symbol of “family values” – the offence of enticing a married woman in order to commit adultery with her – is to be repealed, apparently without the objection of those who argued for the retention of 377A.

On the other side of the equation, how does retention of 377A harm those who might engage in activity “prohibited” by that provision? It is true that there are these assurances of non-enforcement, but this is not the same as a repeal of 377A. The present policy of non-enforcement can be changed, and changed without notice for whatever reason the government of the day deems fit.

More than that, while 377A may not be enforced, discriminatory policies can potentially be built on the logic of its existence – thus public “entertainment” licences can conceivably be denied to speakers who are thought to be sympathetic to 377A activity, on the basis that it is, after all, still criminal. Societies seeking the repeal of 377A can be denied registration on a similar ground.

The balance of interests that is struck by the retention of 377A is not a happy one. In order to spare the feelings of those who object to such activity, which the government acknowledges to be insufficiently harmful to be enforced, 377A is to remain, with the potential to be used without notice, and to be invoked as the basis of other discriminatory policies.

The government displays much wisdom in letting “the situation evolve”, but situations like these do not evolve by the force of nature. It is trite that in a democracy conflicting ideas and those who hold them contend for the community’s acceptance. The role of government, where no sufficient harm is involved, must be to be neutral, allowing both parties to try to persuade the public of their views.

Neutrality is not achieved by retaining 377A, but by its repeal.

Employment of the criminal law to prohibit activity which the government does not really think ought to be prohibited, on the sole basis that “the majority” wants it to be prohibited, is fraught with danger.

The moral force of the criminal law is blunted if there are crimes which are, the government assures the public, never to be enforced, and its “perpetrators” never brought to court and punished.

It demeans the individual to have his behaviour, which is presumably important to him and which the government does not think is harmful to society, to be labeled a crime, and him a criminal. The criminal laws are the ground rules of our society and if it is to be accorded the respect it deserves, it must be reserved for conduct which the government considers to be clearly harmful to society.

What was more disconcerting was how her comparison of “homosexual anal sex to ‘shoving a straw up your nose to drink’ was greeted with thunderous applause in Parliament.” [See here]

A letter to the Straits Times said, "She peppered her arguments with wit, drawing applause from the viewing gallery and getting many MPs thumping their seats."

The reaction of the MPs, more than that of the public in the public gallery, must give pause to Singaporeans who would like to see civility and rational discussion and consideration of issues in the highest law-making institution in the land.

One wonders if our MPs are not homophobes – for how could one bring oneself to applaud such a speech?

Be that as it may, it sheds light on the possible (real) reason behind the government’s adamant insistence on retaining a law which many have so eloquently debunked as unconstitutional, nonsensical and a mockery of our legal system. Indeed, the government itself finds the act of consensual sex between two adult males to be harmless that it even promises not to enforce the law.

Which brings one to this - if one were to consider the main arguments of the government for retention of s377A, one is hard-pressed to find any logic behind any of the main reasons.

The main arguments can be distilled to one - that “society” is not ready to move on the matter. This has been the government’s position, reiterated in recent times by various ministers as well.

"I'm not ready to move, and I don't think a major section of society is ready to move," then Education Minister Lui Tuck Yew said in 2007.

"If the majority of our population is against homosexuality, then it's not for the Government to say we are going to force something against the wishes of the people," Law Minister K Shanmugam was reported to have said in 2009.

“Singapore society is not likely to come to a conclusion on gay rights, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong signalled yesterday that the status quo will remain,” the TODAY newspaper reported in January 2013.

“Why is that law on the books? Because it’s always been there and I think we just leave it,” PM Lee said.

PM Lee’s argument is a ridiculous one. It implies that we should or could never ever remove any laws because all the laws currently in the books would have “always been there” too. But one would not want to be facetious, like advocating, effectively, governance by populism – which is what the ministers are implying, in fact. It is the very thing which the ruling People’s Action Party has always abhorred. Shall we then rule or govern by referendum, with government departments replaced by survey committees?

But let’s look at this oft-repeated reason offered as argument to retain the anti-homosexual law.

What is this “society” which is often cited? Who makes up this “society”? How do we determine what this “society” thinks?

Of course, no answers to these questions have been given by those who cite “society” as their reason for not moving on s377A. It is a rather mysterious entity invoked to support one’s desires at any one time – "society" somehow seemed ready to accept gambling and casinos, abortion, and even anal and oral sex between heterosexual couples, but this same “society” is invoked again to justify retaining an archaic, anachronistic law - and to criminalise the same anal sex between two homosexual male. [Incidentally, "society" also seems to accept lesbianism.]

The bottom line to all the arguments is that the Penal Code is a set of law which our society lives by, and one which we adhere to, to protect society and to punish those who flout the rules in it.

In short, it is to deal with criminal activities which “must entail harm to others that is recognisable and tangible.  In other words, if an act does not harm others, then it should not be a crime,” as then-NMP Siew Kum Hong said, in 2007.

NUS Law Professor Michael Hor wrote in that same year,

"The Government has been strangely silent about the harm that section 377A is intended to prevent.  Indeed, consistent statements over a number of years from the highest officials of the land lead any reasonable observer to think that the Government no longer believes, if indeed it did before, that the sort of activity contemplated by section 377A is harmful at all.  If corroboration were required, it lies in the repeated assurances of the Government that section 377A will not be enforced - apparently because there is no harm to be prevented, no offender to be rehabilitated, no potential offender to be deterred, and no victim to be satisfied.”

So, what is it that we are criminalising? Thin air?

As for “society” not being ready to move on repeal, MP Hri Kumar said it well in Parliament in 2007:

"Further, while society may frown on homosexuality, that, by itself, does not justify criminalising it.  A number of speakers, at least one of them, have highlighted the surveys in the Straits Times where the public was polled and 70% were said to frown on homosexuality.  I can understand that.  Seventy per cent frowned on it.  But how many actually said that they were willing to criminalise it?  That question was not even asked, and that is a serious question because that is the issue we face today."

In February, PM Lee said we should “agree to disagree on gay rights.” If only it were a trivial matter of no consequence, like, let’s agree to disagree that durians are fragrant.

The fact that we had an NMP in Parliament spewing hate speech and fellow MPs reacting with “thunderous applause” and “thumping their seats” in approval tells you that agreeing to disagree is the least of it.

What we should be more concerned with is the insidious homophobia which may already have wormed its way into the House among some of our Members of Parliament. For there is nothing else to call it, given that all other arguments and defence to criminalise the sexual activity of two consenting male adults make no sense whatsoever. Indeed, the government itself admits as much by its pledge of non-enforcement.

For no one who believes in the words and beliefs enshrined in our Pledge would find it conscionable to applaud bigotry, especially when one is also a representative of the people – the very people, or “society”, which one also cites to, in fact, justify that bigotry.

The defence of retaining section 377A thus has nothing to do with whether society is ready to set the law aside. If that were the reason, the issue would and could be easily settled with a national referendum. Nah, “society” is a red herring, a smokescreen, a passing-of-the-buck even, if you will. The real reason has, instead, everything to do with the personal attitudes of our individual MPs toward gay people and the gay community.

And how do we know what their attitudes are?

Just look at those who were cheering the bigotry expressed in Parliament in 2007.

That is what we should be concerned about more - that not a single MP spoke up against that kind of hate speech.

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READ this elegant rebuttal of Thio Li Ann's speech by Janadas Devan: "377A And The Rewriting of Pluralism".

READ also: "New ministry, old ideas" [under "Gay equality"].