Fundamentalists take over prominent Singapore feminist group

[tangaroa]

Due warning: I have little knowledge of this issue, and everything I know about it comes from the English-language reports that I have read today. It seems that a well-organized campaign of right-wing fundamentalists gained enough membership in the Singaporean feminist group AWARE to vote a fundamentalist slate into the group's leadership. Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing first brought the isssue to my attention by linking to the old guard's tale of scores of new members appearing at the election meeting to vote as a bloc for people the veteran activists hardly knew.

The new leadership fired everybody associated with the old organization and changed the locks on the AWARE office while keeping coy on what their intentions were for the organization. A hint as to those intentions came out in an interview of new AWARE president Josie Lau by Channel NewsAsia, as reported by the Electric New Paper.

When asked what Aware would do if they find that a woman has been discriminated in a company because of her sexuality, Ms Lau skirted the issue by saying Aware is a secular organisation. She said: 'We are not there to push our personal beliefs or personal religious affiliations.'

Translation: the new group will do nothing to defend people of different sexual orientations from discrimination in the workplace. Moreover, they see a right for employers to persecute people in the workplace for religious reasons, and like fundamentalists in the US, they see any attempt to stop people from doing that as an imposition of someone else's personal religious beliefs.

I do not know how much Singaporean labour law differs from that of the States in how much power employers are allowed to have over employees' private lives and whether the sort of discrimination described would be allowed. Speaking of that subject, Lau's place of work, DBS, has officially condemned her actions regarding AWARE. That also seems to me to be beyond the bounds of what an employer ought to be concerned with.

As a marketing executive with the Development Bank of Singapore, Lau had led DBS to donate money to Focus on the Family. The rest of DBS corporate was under the impression that Focus on the Family was a "non-religious and non-political organization" until public protests convinced them otherwise.

Lau's church, the Church of Our Saviour, has distributed anti-feminist material, and the church has a "Choices Ministry" program to "cure" homosexuality.

Politically connected lawyer Thio Su Mien has come out as the driving force behind the takeover of AWARE.

Dr Thio, 71, a born-again Christian who runs her own law firm, is the mother of Nominated Member of Parliament Thio Li-ann and her nephew, Dr Alan Chin, is married to new Aware president Josie Lau.

Disturbed by what she saw as signs that it was promoting lesbianism and homosexuality, she began urging women she knew to challenge Aware's attempts to redefine marriage and families.

More information from Thio's press conference.

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Update: The old-guard feminists have retaken control of AWARE.