December 2005

Four persons arrested in a sauna let off with warnings

    

  

 
In mid-April 2005, the police raided a sauna in the Bugis district. I use the word "raided" with deliberation, for I realise it can cause unnecessary fear in the sauna-going public.

Most times, when the police check on a venue, it is a semi-polite, business-like kind of visit. They do not rush in or behave like mobsters. But this instance was not typical.

Furthermore, it was also unusual in being a joint operation between the police and the Civil Defence authorities, whose remit is to look into fire safety precautions. I had not heard of any joint operation before with respect to gay saunas.

Altogether, some 7 or 8 officers (some female) entered abruptly, surprising the 2 staff on duty. Unfortunately, the owner was not present at the time, and the 2 staff were not experienced enough to keep their cool, letting the officers in without much delay and without demanding to see their credentials.

The officers then fanned out throughout the premises and arrested 4 customers.

 

2 of them were in a cubicle, resting. They had apparently left the door to the cubicle unlocked, and were surprised by the officers. While the exact conversation that followed is unclear, the police maintained that when they asked the 2 guys what they were doing there, the 2 chaps said they were resting after a session of sex. It's a little bit hard to believe that anyone would admit to that, but I wasn't there, so I can't say where the truth lies. But see box on the right.

The other two had their locked cubicle broken into. The officers pushed hard against the door and it fell open. At that very moment, one was giving the other a blowjob.

Meanwhile, other police officers seized some artistic pictures the owner had taken from a magazine and displayed on a wall, on the complaint that they were pornographic.

The Civil Defence guys on their part made a note of some fire safety violations.

A message was then left for the owner of the business to go down to the police station as soon as possible, which he did the following day. The 4 arrested guys were held overnight and released on police bail the next day.

* * * * *

The "investigations" dragged on for 8 months. Altogether, the owner -- let's call him Marlowe -- had to go to the police station 4 times. I don't know how many times the 4 guys had to present themselves for questioning, though at one point they were told they'd be charged under Section 377 or 377A of the Penal Code [1]

Concerned about his arrested customers, Marlowe did an internet search before making his first call on the police.

"I think I searched with the words 'Lee Kuan Yew, gay, Singapore'," he said. "And the first thing that came up, right on top, was your article," he told me. [2]

It was a record of a TV interview in 1998 in which former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew said, "But what we are doing as a government is to leave people to live their own lives so long as they don't impinge on other people. I mean, we don't harass anybody."

Marlowe printed out the article and gave a copy of it to the police inspector. His point was that Lee had promised that there wouldn't be harassment.

On his second and third visits to the police station, Marlowe felt that their focus had changed. They asked him plenty of questions about the sauna business -– rather basic questions, it appeared to him, as if they had absolutely no idea what a gay sauna was.

This is something we see all the time in straight men with limited worldviews. Their only references are "health clubs" where masseuses are available, including for sexual services. To them, the notion of prostitution is inseparable from the concept of "health clubs" or saunas. To what extent did a misconception like this play a role in the decision to raid the sauna is a question that is impossible to answer at this time, but it's not something one can easily dismiss.

Anyway, after 8 months, in December 2005, the police finally told all of them, including Marlowe, that they would not be pressing charges. Instead, they were given "police warnings".

* * * * *

Since getting the police to reveal their thought processes and how they decided to do what they did would be as unlikely as snow falling in Singapore, all we can do is to make some observations about the illogicality of the whole affair.

Working backwards, we start with the decision not to prosecute. It was entirely expected. All decisions as to whether to press charges have to be cleared by the Attorney-General's Chambers, and the pattern that we have seen through many years now is that when homosex is consensual, between adults [3] and involving no payment, the state will not prosecute.

It would be up to the police to demonstrate to the satisfaction of the prosecutor that they had enough evidence to prove lack of consent, involvement of minors or payment. Clearly, after 8 months of "investigations" (which might have been little more than an exercise discovering how wrong they were in their original assumptions), the police could find nothing of the sort.

This can only mean one of two possible starting conditions:

One is that the police knew of the standing prosecutorial policy, but wrongly thought that sex involving minors or prostitutes was occurring in the sauna. This could be due to bad intelligence, or, more likely, plain heterosexual ignorance (since the police had to ask the owner, post hoc, some basic questions as to what a gay sauna was).

The second possibility: the police didn't know of the prosecutorial policy, and on receiving word that "homosexual activities" were taking place, decided on their own to mount the raid, confident that any arrests they made would lead to charges in court.

At this point, I need to remind readers that the officers moved into the building quickly, and even broke open a locked door. This kind of behaviour suggests that they were acting on a belief that a crime was in progress and they had to catch the perpetrators in the act.

Furthermore, at an early stage in the interrogations, the police said they expected to charge the 4 men under Sections 377 or 377A of the Penal Code. This adds weight to the second of the two possibilities -- that the police had no idea of the standing policy from the AG's chambers.

  

 

 

Or maybe they did tell the police officers, out of defiance, that they had just had sex. "So what?"

See the next right-margin box, below.

 

You may conclude that inter-departmental communication is thus very poor. Indeed, for all the high technology the government has installed in the various ministries, this is entirely typical. But more than that, I don't think the failure to communicate is all accidental. How can it be, when outsiders like us have noticed a pattern of non-prosecution for years now, and noted ministers' statements consistent with such a policy? Why is it that when outsiders are able to draw such a conclusion about policy, the police are still in the dark?

So again, there are two possibilities: either the AG's Chambers keeps denying to the police about such a standing policy, or that the police are aware, but for their own intra-departmental reasons, choose to mount raids and threaten people.

Thus, at one level or another, there is intention for harrassment to continue, albeit at a low enough level so as not to provoke a major ruckus. Either the AG's Chambers is deliberately permitting, perhaps even encouraging, the police to act on their ignorance, or the police, despite being informed, is still choosing to raid, seize and threaten even when they know no formal prosecution can result.

But didn't Lee Kuan Yew say no harraassment? See footnote 2 again.

The affair concluded with the police issuing a "warning". This is not a conviction. It is quite literally a notification that if you're caught again in similar circumstances, the police will not show any forbearance the second time. They will immediately haul you to court, and if convicted, the warning may be tendered as a material fact at the sentencing stage.

But hang on, given the policy applied by the AG's Chambers, no prosecution can result, even if you're caught a second, third or fourth time. If they have discovered that they've made a mistake in conducting a raid, why couldn't the police just drop the matter and apologise (and offer to pay for the door they damaged)? Why issue warnings? So, isn't the issuing of warnings just threat and harassment, pure and simple?

At the same time, you'd note that despite breezy claims by ministers when pressed by foreign journalists, that they no longer prosecute consensual, adult homosex, the Minister of State for Home Affairs still refuses to repeal the law [4]. Why this deliberate ambiguity?

But didn't Lee Kuan Yew say no harassment? See footnote 2 yet again. See also the statement by Lee Hsien Loong (now Prime Minister) in November 2000: "homosexual people are not harassed or intimidated or squeezed in Singapore." [5]

Taken together, I think I can ask whether these assurances are being implemented in good faith, don't you agree? 

© Yawning Bread 

 

 

Does harassment work?

As always, I am concerned how arrest and being held overnight in a police lock-up affected the 4 guys. If they had been in the closet, the arrest might mean their families finding out that they were gay in the most disturbing way possible.

This is particularly searing if the person concerned is an older guy, married, with kids.

Fortunately, I am told that the 4 guys were relatively young. I have considerable faith in the resilience of young gays. That faith was validated when Marlowe, the owner, told me that he had heard that one of the 4 guys is going around proudly telling everyone of his "experience". He is wearing it as a mark of valour.

This proves another point: threats and harassment work best when the target community is in the closet and ashamed of being gay. The tactic backfires when the community is not.

Yet the tactic is pursued in the belief that it helps to keep homosexuals in their place, without ever realising that this belief is founded on a value system that treats homosexuality as shameful, a value system that the target community increasingly no longer shares.

So we have a government that is expending tax payers' money and resources acting on a belief that is false, and whose actions continue to provoke a minority and stoke resentment; more, whose actions feed the marginalised's sense of power.

What good does it do? None that you can see. Yet, for lack of intelligent debate -- our government-controlled media does not want to make the government look bad -- the stupidity goes on and on.

 

Footnotes

  1. This is the law against "carnal knowledge against the order of nature" and "gross indecency" between two males.
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  2. See CNN: Lee Kuan Yew and the gay question 
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  3. What constitutes "adult"? Is it the same for homosexual sex as heterosexual sex? See the article Is it true that consensual  homosex is no longer prosecuted?. See also the Straits Times editorial  ST editorial - gay tolerance where it said, "as everyone knows, these sections of the Criminal Code are not strictly enforced."
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  4. See Is homophobia essential to our 'national interests'? 
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  5. See yax-216 Radio journalists ask the gay question 
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Addenda

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