Singapore is not known for its activism, much less dramatic infighting. More people know Singapore for what's forbidden (purchasing chewing gum, taking durian fruit on the subway) than what's allowed (table-top dancing in bars with a license). That said, there are numerous NGOs and issues-oriented groups that undertake the hard slogging of street level organizing for women's issues, racial and inter-religious understanding, and environmentalism.
For the last quarter century, the leading organizational advocate for the cause of women has been a group called AWARE (Association of Women for Action and Research). AWARE has functioned tirelessly and effectively for equality in marriage rights, citizenship, the treatment of foreign domestic workers, and disenfranchised women across the island state.
Amazingly, AWARE has just been taken over in a coup by a group of conservative Christian Singaporean women concerned that AWARE was too "pro-gay". On May 2, we will find out if the coup succeeds.
All links to AWARE information are to the site http://www.we-are-aware.sg, which is run by the recently ousted AWARE leadership, rather than the AWARE organization site itself, which is now run by the coup leaders described below.
Also, Chinese surnames are capitalized the first time used, since the conventional order is surname followed by given name
AWARE had been a well regarded, well run NGO acting on behalf of women in Singapore for decades. Noteably, AWARE had prepared shadow reports on Singapore in the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). But besides high profile work like CEDAW, AWARE publishes research reports in a number of topics of importance to women, provides public education through the AWARE Training Institute, and provides direct services to women in need.
So what happened? At first the facts were unclear, but now it appears that a group of women were influenced by THIO Su Mien, a former dean of the law faculty at National University of Singapore. Dr. Thio, who refers to herself as a "feminist mentor" to the coup plotters, describes herself as a born-again Christian and attends a large anti-gay church called Church of Our Saviour. (COOS insists it is not anti-gay, but they seem, err, preoccupied: their "position statement on homosexuality" is the third link on their site, sandwiched between "about our church" and "weekly happenings".)
Dr. Thio's antipathy towards homosexuals is well known; she first came to the attention of Singaporeans about 15 years ago when she wrote a letter to the Straits Times advocating against hiring homosexuals in the civil service. Her attitude also seems to run in the family: her daughter Thio Li-Ann, a nominated member of parliament (NMP), delivered an absolutely excreble speech to parliament in 2007 during debate over proposed repeal of Singapore's antisodomy laws for homosexuals (the code was repealed for heterosexual sodomy, but still on the books for gay sex). Dr. Thio's nephew Dr. Alan CHIN is the husband of the new AWARE president Josie LAU, and known to Singaporeans for writing a series of blistering anti-gay letters to the Straits Times during the debate. Lau herself works for the Singapore bank DBS, and led credit card promotion last year in which DBS gave donations to Focus on the Family! This is the new president of AWARE.
Dr. Thio and others, probably working informally through the church email social network, encouraged Christian anti-gay women to sign up for AWARE membership, and sign up they did. Then they showed up to the Annual General Meeting of AWARE at the end of March and quickly voted themselves into almost all of the offices and executive committee seats. For about two weeks after the stunning takeover they were quiet and insisted they had the interests of AWARE at heart, but then as it got into the press came out with their anti-gay agenda. Some of their later emails have also been leaked.
But in practice they have been anything but quiet. The new exco (or New Guard, as they are called in the press) has fired volunteer subcommittee heads, fired AWARE staff (and replaced them with church members), and changed the locks on the AWARE premises. The preceeding president quit the exco after she was excluded from exco meetings, in violatin of the AWARE constitution.
It is now an all-out battle in the public sphere. The ousted Old Guard has been making a valiant case for the inclusion of the rights of lesbians in their representation of all women, while trying not to appear to fit the New Guard's characterization of them as being "pro-gay" in conservative Singapore. The Old Guard has also gotten enough enough signatures to petition for an extraordinary general meeting of AWARE this Saturday for a vote of no confidence in the new executive committee. Membership in AWARE has skyrocketed (female Singaporeans and permanent residents age 18 and older can be voting members). The New Guard has made a lame case that the Old Guard had sacrificed other issues to focus on homosexuality in their Comprehensive Sexual Education programs, so lame that they've been slapped back by the Singapore Ministry of Education.
The MOE statement and other moves suggest that the government is none too happy with the new exco. It's not just the public fighting: the government wants more debate, and this is as lively an argument as I've seen in the four years I've lived here. But Singapore is a secular, multi-cultural society where Christians account for only 15% of the population. The government takes great pains to encourage inter-cultural and religious understanding, to make sure racial and religious strife never become a significant problem, much less reach the level they do from time to time in neighboring Malaysia. The MOE statement might also be a sign that the government would back a libel suit by the Old Guard against the New Guard, since Singapore's libel law is much stronger than, say, that in the US. And the government clearly does not want a secular organization to take on a religious agenda. But I hope the government sticks to its stated intention to stay out, since the debate itself has been a wake-up call to progressive women and men, and a reminder of the hard work made by heroes at groups like AWARE. The old AWARE, that is.
So now we go to Saturday. I'm a man, and not a Singaporean, so I can't vote, but I'm volunteering with the old guard to see if progressive women can retain an organization that has done so much for ALL women in the last 26 years.