THE TEMASEK REVIEW

Ripped from Help Save Aware, editing by Wayang Party

Chairperson:

Good evening, members of the media. We apologise for this late notice in calling this briefing but I appreciate everybody’s attendance. And we call this meeting in haste because we feel that we shud not delay any more in disclosing something very serious to the public about Aware.

In tonight’s briefing we will talk about exco experience with Old Guard, what is Aware today, what does this exco aim to do and interactions with the media. Before we move forward, I’d like to introduce the members at this table: Josie Lau, our president. She does not need further introduction. To her right is Maureen Ong, who’s the honorary treasurer. To my right is Jenica Chua. She’s the honorary secretary. And at the right of the table is Dr Thio Su Mien. Dr Thio is a supporter of families. So I’d like to start right now by our President addressing exco’s experience with the Old Guard for the last 3 and a half weeks.

Josie Lau:

Friends of the media, thank you for coming at such late last minute notice. I had said in my first & last interview after being appointed as President of Aware that I did not get involved in Aware to be engaged in controversies. And so far I’ve kept a very stoic and dignified silence. But with the recent happenings of events, I’ve no choice, it left me no choice to break this silence and come out publicly to say what’s been happening.

This is actually something that could have been resolved internally btwn the Old Guard & the New Guard in a very polite and civil way. But that has not happened. I’ll tell you so far I’ve only been appointed President for about a week & I’ve only been an exco member for about 3 weeks. But to date I’ve only been met with hostility, intimidation.

I felt so bullied I tell you. I will tell you what’s happening. My family received death threats and it’s now a police case. Each day I fear for the physical safety of my children, my family. There’s even a blog site detailing my children’s names and which school they go to. I don’t understand what has sparked this irrational fear of us, the new exco members, and what hatred. If you’re a parent you will understand how I feel.

I feel so indignant. All I wanted to do is to serve the community & be a member of this Aware, to push for the cause of women. Do I deserve this? Death threat? What has Singapore become? Is this what we want in Spore? And I’ll tell you as President I have an official president@aware.org.sg email. Guess what? The secretariat has locked me out. I have confronted the secretariat. The secretariat has been fired, okay.

I’ll tell you I’ve my fellow committee members here who’ll share with you their own experience, how they’ve been subjected to hostility & uncooperative staff members in the last 3 weeks, and all we wanted is to push & start work & get going with our work. But will they allow us? No. They’ve just been pushing & pushing us, badgering us all the time.

Chairperson: Jenica, do you want to share your experience?

Jenica Chua:

I want to put it forth that I came to join Aware because I felt that when I reach a certain age it’s impt to contribute to society, to Singapore to help other women. And we’re in a difficult economic situation. So I went to Aware. I’ve been Aware member for over 2 yrs now. I went for the executive committee position. And to my utter horror, after I was elected there were a lot of allegations about my link to 377A.

I don’t know why it came out in the press. But because of, I’ve written many things to the press. I’ve written about technology index & other areas, but the only thing that came out on the 10th affer the exco was elected was the fact I wrote to 377A and there was a homosexual slant to it. The next day I recd a death threat. They threatened to harm my loved ones. The person said that he has now joined a jihadist. He’s anti-Christian & he will find ways to harm my family, my loved ones. And all I did was to join a women’s association. It’s a women’s association to help women.

I felt very intimidated. Why did this happen? I’m a normal Sporean like any other of you. Why shud this happen to me? And it never stopped. Three days ago my company’s corporate communications person called me. Somebody wrote an e-mail to my company to say that because of my involvement in Aware it’s bad for the company’s reputation & urged the company to take action against me. So now it’s evolved to a threat. And because of that I couldn’t sleep for many nights. I felt very harassed. And all I did, the only thing I did was to join Aware. I don’t understand this. I thought I joined a women’s association to help women.

Throughout this difficult period we had a lot of wrestles becos the previous president kept changing the timing for the exco to meet. It went to & fro, to & fro, and I was like stuck in btwn as the secretary. I don’t understand.

Josie Lau: I think Loi  you may have some experience too.

Lois Ng: Members of the press, suddenly I feel that it’s a crime to be a Christian & to hold an exco position. I’m a Christian. I’ve made no bones about it. It’s been reported in the paper & it’s also reported in my website. But I’m now on the hit list of this operation level. I’ve been termed a leper. And this blogger has gone online to garner support to boycott my business. 

I run a business for people with disabilities. They include the autistic, ppl with below average IQ, ppl with physical disability. And we make a living by producing creative & quality gifts for the corporate & tourist mkt. This person has gone online & extracted info from the ST and listed my working address, which is at High Point in Geylang and also my customers, their tel nos & their addresses & he’s asked ppl to boycott my biz & to even make verbal & written complaints to my clients to stop buying from me. And he says this is to teach me a lesson for joining Aware because I’m a Christian.

I’m shocked. Spore is a multiracial society. We embrace diversity in religion. My religion is a pte matter. It’s got nothing to do with my work in Aware. And I joined Aware becos I’ve been asked to help Aware start up a social enterprise, to create employment for women, esp women with, singles with children, unmarried women & women who are lowly educated. And I come in to create employment for them. I did not expect to be on their hit list and my life and my staff’s lives are also in danger. What is happening to our society right now? What is happening? Can someone explain this irrational & dangerous move by some small group of people?

Josie Lau: Maureen has something to add too.

Maureen Ong: Mine is not as bad as theirs. But really we’ve been trying very hard to get on with the work and we hv been hampered from doing so. We’ve recd numerous complaints from people who are trying to register as members. Either they cannot get into the website or they get replies from the website saying that…women are registered as students.

In the first place there’s no category called student membership. You’re either an ordinary member who can vote, or you’re an associate member who cannot vote. So we really don’t know what’s happening. And when we asked the website host company for further info, we’re told that we cannot ask them for info becos they only will communicate with either Constance Singam or Tanli(??) who is no longer with Aware, or Joanna Wong which is the PR asst. So there’s no recognition of us, either the President, the VP, or any of the new exco members.

There’s also an issue of the bandwidth. When we checked further why there was difficulty in accessing the website, we were told that the bandwidth was only 5 gigabytes. And that’s quite ridiculous for an association like Aware. And becos of that, the website was down from 18 Apr to 19 Apr. And then the website, the bandwidth was increased. So these are some of the instances when we try very hard to do our work & yet we’re hampered from doing so. Thank you.

Chairperson: Members of the press, we’ve given you brief statements of experiences working with Aware for the last 3 and a half weeks. And the next point, what we want to do is that Josie will address to tell you more about what is Aware today.

Josie Lau:

Now what’s with Aware today? What does it stand for? Frankly not many people know. Because it’s been kept to such a small group of people. As of end of last Dec it was only about some 260 plus people. Now you’re wondering why Dr Thio Su Mien is here today. I think I will leave it to her to tell you her perspective of what’s going on with Aware.

Thio Su Mien:

Good evening. I’m here as feminist mentor to women in the workplace. In the last 10 yrs I’ve been encouraging(??) women so that they become, released into society, to contribute to society. And it’s not an easy task to get women because of the work balance to contribute. Having found this group of women, quite disparate group, becos I teach all over Singapore & I counsel all over Spore & training people.

 I’m absolutely outraged that very group of women take time off to contribute to society they get this kind of ferocious attack. I don’t understand. I don’t understand what has come of our ppl.

Aware was formed 26 years ago by my friends, my contemporaries. And it’s done great work in so many areas. And in 1998(??), membership was about 700 odd, which was very well. Suddenly in 2006 it sort of declined; 2007, it declined to 200 odd ppl. And in 2008 there was an AGM where they sought to introduce to give men the vote in a women’s orgn where the objective is to represent all the women of Spore & not a small proportion of women.

You know that women form about 50% of our population. So we must focus our attention on promotion of the rights of women. To my horror I found that they want to introduce men into a women’s society. And the very strange thing was that at that meeting there were only 25(??) members who turned up at that meeting – AGM 2008. So I started looking into the affairs of Aware to see what’s happening to this organization which my friends have set up. And not only have they set it up and my name is here, one of the women we honoured, becos I was a pioneer feminist.

I was first law dean. Subsequent years, probably a female, a woman who runs one of the largest law firms in Spore. But I sit on the boards of many public listed companies. I was also at one time a member of the Asian Deveolpment Board tribunal. And I was also judge of the World Bank. I served it for 8 yrs and retired as senior VP of the World Bank administrative tribunal…with some standing to speak about this because in Cedaw this is this thing about promoting women into positions of leadership. And under…there is this 30 to 35% rule which I thought, wow, we have a legal document whereby we can promote the cause of women, bring all the young women into leadership positions. But with the economic crisis there’s also this desire to help those who are disadvantaged.

When women & men are retrenched, we want to make sure that not women are retrenched. There needs to be an even hand in this. So there are many many issues that we need to look to. And I find to my dismay that Aware seems to be only very interested on…and the advancement of homosexuality, which is a man’s issue and how it came under Aware is quite covert. …when Aware sponsored the film Spider Lilies. Spider Lilies is a film by 2 lesbians who fell in love. One is a tattooist and the only one is a virtual sex worker.

When a parent saw this film… He wrote to Today and he asked why is Aware showing this film becos he’s got a teenage daughter. I think it really troubled him. And lo and behold…is that this is part of a comprehensive sexual education. So then it became kind of impt that they shud know what is in this prog. And this prog is already in schools, 30 schools whereby they are using this prog. But from what she said, the suggestion is that in this programme, young girls from 12 to 18 are taught that it’s ok to experiment with each other. And this is something which…parents in Spore. Are we going to have an entire…of lesbians? I have nothing against lesbians or homosexuals personally. On a personal front, I’ve given ministered, I’ve counselled them. So you need to understand I’m not talking about… They are in pain. And very often…where you have abusive fathers, they do things with their daughters and the daughters revolt, rebel against society. We understand this is what it’s all about. It’s the people, the pain of people…

It’s the people, the pain of people, the woundedness(??) of people and all this is not, you know, it brings out a reach(??). So if you need proof that Aware has actually moved to…you have this male sexual programmes and workshops which was inducted under the auspices of Aware in 2008 by a Finnish activist and he was talking about the sensitivity, how…about sensitivity, sexual…and so on. Now, Finland has a law. I think you need to know this…law is now…should we have state-funded artificial insemination for women… So this is under discussion, I do not know whether they passed this into law. So these are issues, are you for or not, for homosexualism and… The only question is what are we talking about? Are we talking about same-sex marriage?

Are we talking about…taxpayers’ monies abused…you could say a man and woman, they can go for…for whatever you call it, so what about us? So I think this whole thing we need to discuss it, bring it up openly and discuss in a different time. So I believe that…focus which is like…set up by my friends that they will go back to look after the majority, all women, all women of Singapore…all the women. So my…is that can we refocus on the excellent objectives of Aware? Go back to its original purpose for it…for it being an NGO? So I leave that because I think I’ve just raised a comment.

Chairperson: Okay. Thank you, Su Mien. We move to the third point: What this Aware Exco aim to do?

Josie Lau:

Again, in my last interview, I said Aware has lost its focus but I think I was being very polite when I said that. It has really not lost its focus but I think it has gone further than that, much, much further than that. It has now become a single-objective organisation. So that’s what the new team is here to do: we want to bring Aware back to its original very noble objective which is to represent all women, to advance their cause, all women whatever religion and race in areas such as professional development, their private life, their health and Singapore does have an Asian population. We need to look at the ageism, all the problems.

Look at women who have some slight diabetes the minute they hit certain age, their insurance premium no longer make any sense for them. So we should be pushing those cause and I think with almost 50 per cent of our population in Singapore being women we really have to refocus back on our bread and butter issue where everyday women on the street cares about. So, I think we want, we are really serious about getting started on our work but we haven’t been able to do so for the last three weeks and I hope from this press conference the new team can start to work seriously on how we could bring this association to a higher level of recognition amongst the Singaporean woman.

Chairperson:

Thank you, Josie. Right now, we’ll give 30 minutes to the media to ask more questions. You have answered some and then when you’re going to ask a question, please go to the mike and introduce yourself, your name and the paper or the media that you’re representing.

Source: Help Save AWARE

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