By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Aug 8 2007 (IPS)

Just when it looked like time to celebrate, Singapore’s gay community has been hit with a spate of bans targeting events around a two-week-long gay pride festival.

The most recent came on Wednesday, when the officials clamped down on a picnic and a five-km run for gays being held in the affluent city-state’s Botanical Gardens. People Like Us, the organisers of the event, were told that the event had ‘’political’’ overtones. The event was to be held on Aug. 9, Singapore’s National Day.

‘’They think that a picnic in the park is a sign of an insurrection,’’ says Alex Au, a member of People Like Us and a leading gay rights advocate in Singapore. ‘’It shows how strong the country’s deeply homophobic lobby is.’’

Au, himself, was a victim of another banned event listed for the gay pride festivities. An exhibition of his photographs that focused on same-sex couples kissing was denied a license by the authorities. ‘’The proposed exhibition, which mainly focuses on homosexual kissing, is deemed to promote a homosexual lifestyle and cannot be allowed,’’ a letter from the Singapore Media Development Authority (SMDA) stated.

‘’What they are afraid of is the exhibition, not the 80 colour photographs that I took,’’ Au said during a telephone interview from Singapore. ‘’If I want, I can publish it in a book or carry it around and show it to people.’’

A gay-rights forum suffered the same fate as Au’s exhibition, when the government threw cold water on the plans by denying a visa to a foreign scholar due to address the forum on Tuesday. Douglas Sanders, a professor emeritus in law at the University of British Columbia, Canada, was billed as a key speaker at the seminar on ‘’Sexual Orientation in International Law: The Case of Asia.’’

But such a crackdown was not the case in July, when the SMDA, which banned Au’s exhibition, found little reason to censor a play, ‘Happy Endings-Asian Boys Vol. 3,’ by Alfian Sa’at, a local playwright. Scenes of same-sex characters kissing were part of the fare offered on stage in this gay-themed production, which ran for over three weeks.

Nor have the authorities come down hard on entertainment venues catering to the gay community, including bars and clubs and saunas, which operate openly, attracting local and foreign clients. The years since 2000 were marked by this seeming liberal wave aimed at catering to the alternative lifestyles of sexual minorities.

These contradictions come at a time when the country long known for its strait-laced policies on religious and moral issues has been debating if the laws that make homosexual activity a crime – a legacy of British colonisation – should be repealed. In April, this South-east Asian nation’s founder, former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, softened his strongman’s image by questioning the ban on gay sex.

Yet there are contradictions that leave little room for optimism for critics of Singapore’s excessively controlled political and social environment. ‘’When it is about making money or businesses that cater to the gay community, the government seems more open. But the policy of restrictions has not changed when it has to do with public activity that they think has a political tone,’’ says Sinapan Samydorai, a ranking member of the Think Centre, a Singapore-based rights lobby.

‘’This has been so after 2000, when there were many signs of the country opening up,’’ he explained during a telephone interview from Singapore. ‘’What they don’t do is go hunting for people in the private space. So they are sending out two messages.’’

Sanders, the Canadian academic, drew attention to such a dual policy in his paper that was not delivered in Singapore. For one, the country ‘’prohibits the legal recognition’’ of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) non-governmental organisations. ‘’Controls on the media limit LGBT news, though the (pro-government) ‘Straits Times’ has reported on prosecutions.’’

Goh Cheok Tong, the former prime minister, ‘’ended the official ban on government hiring gays and lesbians, giving a good secular medical explanation for homosexuality,’’ says Sanders. ‘’Some of us are born this way, he said. And some of us are born that way. Current Prime Minister Lee (Hsien Long) described the present pattern as ‘drawing a line,’ balancing toleration and control.’’

Singapore’s ability to assert such control stems from it having a strong and domineering government presiding over a small area, unlike others countries in South-east Asia, where weaker governments and more accommodating policies towards sexual minorities has ensured gay citizens enjoy a fuller life, like Thailand.

Even Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country and the largest nation in the region, appears more favourable to sexual minorities. ‘’The lesbian, gay and transgender communities are officially protected in Indonesia,’’ says Dede Oetomo, a professor at the economics faculty at the University of Surabaya, Indonesia. ‘’It has been explicitly mentioned in the human rights declaration made in 2004.’’

‘’Indonesia has about 20 gay and lesbian organisations and there are no bans that stop them from having public activities. They are all legitimate bodies,’’ Oetomo, who is also a founder of the Gaya Nusantra Foundation, in Surabaya, told IPS. ‘’Our problem is at the cultural level, where families do not approve of being gay, and also at the community level in some places.’’

It explains why for Au, the Singapore gay rights leader, what prevails at home is ‘’very schizophrenic. They absolutely dislike any kind of challenge from people like us’’.

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