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Alan John

As mysteries go, this was in a class of its own.
One day in March 2009, Singapore’s most prominent women’s organisation held its annual general meeting, and everyone expected it to be uneventful. Not many members were expected to turn up, and a team had already agreed to form its new committee. It would be over quickly.
Except that it did not go that way, that day. Just before the meeting began, a stream of strangers appeared and soon outnumbered the surprised Aware members present. The new faces were members too, but did not bother to introduce themselves. When it was time to elect the new committee, they contested and swept nine out of 12 positions.
It was a brazen power grab that none of the women who had led Aware over 24 years had seen coming. Now, too late, they realised the reason for a sudden spike in new memberships in the months before the AGM.

Aware’s veterans were so shocked, they said nothing in public. Strangely, nor did the group that was now in charge. There was no announcement to say who they were, why they had seized leadership in this fashion, or what they intended to do with the women’s group.
I was a senior editor of The Straits Times at the time, and nobody in the newsroom of Singapore’s main English-language newspaper had an inkling that this had happened, even though many of us knew many of Aware’s leaders well.
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The Association of Women for Action and Research was founded in 1985 and from the start had been outspoken on controversial issues, disagreeing openly with government policies and writing letters to the press. They were respected individuals in different fields, including professionals, senior civil servants, academics, lecturers and journalists.
Aware was generally well regarded, even if the tone used by some of its leaders as it battled male chauvinism and urged gender equality in patriarchal Singapore came across occasionally as overly strident. They could rub people the wrong way, and not everyone admired them.

I knew a number of the Aware leaders personally, including Constance Singam, the immediate past president who had been present the day the crowd of unknowns arrived and took over. About a week after the AGM, distraught and bewildered, she told me what had happened.
There were so many unanswered questions. Who were they? Why did they do this? What do they want? Each time she just replied: “We don’t know!”
It was a story that needed to be done, but it took several more days before the first news report ran, because it proved so hard to pin down facts about the new team.
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Over the next four weeks, The Straits Times led the coverage of what came to be known as “the Aware saga”, with the two groups involved dubbed the Old Guard and the New Guard. There were twists and turns aplenty until a dramatic extraordinary general meeting on May 2 ended with the original leadership regaining control.
Anyone who knows civil society knows that organisations have internal squabbles, personal differences, and some leadership contests get ugly. But nobody could recall anything like the Aware power grab happening previously in Singapore. A fortnight after the AGM, there was still no telling who the New Guard were, or why they had taken control that way. It was nearly impossible for reporters to obtain any information about the women. They were suspicious, did not reply to queries, and said nothing. Within another fortnight, the newly-elected president stepped down. Veteran members elected to the committee were sidelined.

Forced to dig deeper, reporters found that some of those now in charge of Aware had written to the press previously to warn against the dangers of promoting homosexual lifestyles. The new team were all Christian, and several attended the Anglican Church of our Saviour, which had a long-running programme urging gay Singaporeans to return to the heterosexual fold.
Still, the details remained sketchy until April 23, nearly a month after the takeover, when the new team’s self-proclaimed “feminist mentor” revealed herself and turned out to be a former dean of the law faculty at the National University of Singapore.
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Dr Thio Su-Mien said she had been monitoring Aware for some time, and in her view, it had been promoting homosexuality, a charge the Old Guard denied. She had encouraged the Christian women she knew to join Aware and put things right as far as the focus on family and marriage were concerned.
As the saga unfolded, a senior pastor of the Anglican church where several of the women worshipped urged the congregation to support Aware’s new leadership, saying from the pulpit: “It’s not a crusade against the people but there’s a line that God has drawn for us, and we don’t want our nation crossing that line.”

The New Guard did succeed in getting the education ministry to halt a sexuality programme run by Aware in schools, alleging that it, too, promoted homosexuality.
The Aware saga was a hard story to report, and journalists at The Straits Times were accused of being biased against the New Guard. But how was the paper to report their side, if they did not respond to numerous efforts to reach them? When their leader Thio finally revealed herself, she was reported in detail.
The paper’s prominent coverage of the Aware saga was criticised as excessive and “breathless”, its journalists – and the paper itself – accused of having a homosexual agenda.
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One member of parliament accused the paper of exploiting the religious angle, wondering aloud in the legislature if it might have acted differently had the women not been Christian but of another faith. Although he withdrew his comments subsequently, those were serious charges in a country where the media takes the greatest care with issues of race and religion.
There certainly was a religious angle in the Aware saga, and considerably more. It revealed that members of Singapore’s conservative right saw nothing wrong in claiming the secular space occupied by civil society, in order to push their beliefs. It showed that they included influential and articulate individuals, and they could muster the support needed to pull off the stealthy takeover of a legitimate, non-religious organisation.




Christians make up under a fifth of the population of 5.6 million – the rest being Buddhists, Taoists, Muslims, Hindus and freethinkers – but they are well represented among the country’s elite.
The Aware saga was important for reinforcing that in multi-religious Singapore, there is a common space where everyone is free to be who they are, and differences will be respected.
It helped greatly that the National Council of Churches of Singapore issued a statement saying it did not condone churches getting involved in matters concerning the Aware episode, or religious leaders making use of the pulpit for that purpose. The senior pastor said he regretted what he did. Leaders of other faiths issued similar statements, emphasising the line between religious and secular space.
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But something else happened that made the Aware saga a landmark event for civil society.
Singaporeans best known for being apathetic about civil society matters were moved in quite an uncharacteristic way. Now they stepped forward, Christian and non-Christian alike, to express discomfort and indignation that those with religious motivations would act the way the New Guard did.
They supported Aware’s Old Guard, signed up in droves as members and showed up at the extraordinary general meeting on May 2 where, after seven hours of speeches, jeers, boos, shouting and heckling, a vote of no confidence was passed against the New Guard. The team decided to step down, and the organisation returned to its original leaders.

Aware marks 10 years since that episode this month. It remains a modestly sized women’s organisation but one with clout, and a leading advocate for gender equality. It amended its rules quickly, to ensure another power grab would not happen. The episode prompted other civil society groups to check their own rule books too, and to treat AGMs with a little more care.
Much else has changed in the way Aware is run, not least its new professionalism, that relies on full-time workers and research-based advocacy, where previously it was mostly a volunteer set-up.
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In the years that followed, The Straits Times would find itself scrutinised from time to time for evidence of a homosexual agenda. When it reported LGBT changes elsewhere, including gay marriage and parenthood, accusations would resurface that it was intent on promoting alternative lifestyle choices unacceptable in Singapore.
The Aware saga revealed the clear divide between Singapore’s conservatives and liberals.
Conservative Christians remain steadfast in speaking up on issues that concern them, as they are free to do. In March this year, they persuaded the authorities to cancel a concert by a Swedish black metal band known to spout anti-Christian and satanic lyrics. The effort included a petition that attracted more than 16,000 signatures.




But when it comes to provoking an immediate and sharp reaction, nothing gets the conservative right more worked up than LGBT issues.
Singapore has an active LGBT community and its annual Pink Dot gathering gets bigger each year, but changing laws that affect it will not be easy. Gay marriage and parenthood may make the news elsewhere, but any talk of the same happening in Singapore will be met with forceful resistance from the right.
Sex between men remains illegal in Singapore under Section 377A of the Penal Code, although the law is not enforced. It is a law many regard as a bad law.
Days after India’s supreme court struck down a similar law last year, decriminalising consensual gay sex, two Singapore men filed a court challenge to repeal Section 377A.
Their action sparked an immediate response, with churches coming out strongest to say the law must stay, because the Bible forbids homosexual behaviour, and repealing the law would promote and normalise an unacceptable lifestyle.
From the opposite end, pro-repeal activists and their supporters organised themselves to marshal their arguments along with an online petition calling for the law to go. The case is still pending.
Ten years after the Aware saga, much has changed, yet so much has remained the same in Singapore.


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LGBTQ

LGBT rights in Singapore: gay community continues battle to be accepted, 10 years after Christian power grab at women’s group Aware

A supporter at Singapore’s Pink Dot LGBT event in 2017. Photo: AFP

FILE - This Dec. 1, 2012 file photo shows a silhouette of a crucifix and a stained glass window inside a Catholic Church in New Orleans. As U.S. Catholic bishops gather for an important national assembly, the clergy sex abuse crisis dominates their agenda. But it's only one of several daunting challenges facing the nation's largest religious denomination. While federal and state law enforcement agencies widen their investigations of abuse, the church finds itself with ever fewer priests and nuns in service. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Participants dressed in pink pose for a photograph at the annual "Pink Dot" event in a public show of support for the LGBT community at Hong Lim Park in Singapore on June 13, 2015. The event, which is a play on Singapore's nickname -- "The Little Red Dot" on the world map -- has grown in stature since its first edition in 2009, when 2,500 people attended. AFP PHOTO / MOHD FYROL / AFP PHOTO / MOHD FYROL

epa04286844 An aerial handout photo provided by Pink Dot Sg shows participants forming a giant pink dot during the Pink Dot event at the Speakers' Corner in Hong Lim Park in Singapore, 28 June 2014. The annual Pink Dot Sg event is the closest thing Singapore has to a gay pride parade which promotes an acceptance of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community in Singapore. About 26,000 people filled Hong Lim Park, the only place where public assemblies can take place without a permit, dressed in pink in support of Pink Dot's message: 'freedom to love'. EPA/PINK DOT SG / HANDOUT EDITORIAL USE ONLY

This photo taken on February 8, 2019 shows central Singapore's iconic promenade and skyline. - Those in Singapore with HIV -- the virus that causes AIDS -- have long complained of prejudice, and campaigners say a data breach of some 14,200 people, whose HIV status was released on the internet in January 2019, has caused widespread consternation. (Photo by Roslan RAHMAN / AFP) / TO GO WITH STORY Singapore-social-health-homosexuality-data-HIV, FOCUS by Sam REEVES

***PAY PER USE. Please re-download from vendor website.*** National university of singapore. [14JUL2014 BROADSHEET EDUCATION]

Why some members of Singapore’s LGBT community prefer life in the shadows

Some in Singapore worry about a backlash against LGBT activism. Photo: EPA

Gay fathers

A supporter attends the annual "Pink Dot" event in a public show of support for the LGBT community at Hong Lim Park in Singapore on July 1, 2017. Thousands of Singaporeans took part in the gay-rights rally on July 1. / AFP PHOTO / Roslan RAHMAN

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A surprise takeover by conservatives of the advocacy group a decade ago revealed deep divides between the country’s conservatives and liberals, particularly on homosexuality, and Singapore has moved on little since


A surprise takeover by conservatives of advocacy group Aware a decade ago revealed deep divides between the country’s conservatives and liberals, particularly on homosexuality, and Singapore has moved on little since.


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