Asian Angle | LGBT rights in Singapore: gay community continues battle to be accepted, 10 years after Christian power grab at women’s group Aware
- 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
As mysteries go, this was in a class of its own.
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.