Allow society to be provoked
By Andrew Loh
“The guidelines clearly state that we will not fund projects which are incompatible with the core values promoted by the Government and society or disparage the Government,” said the director of arts development, National Arts Council (NAC), Ms Elaine Ng. She was referring to the NAC’s funding cut for theatre group, Wild Rice, in May 2010. [See here.]
Shortly after, some 23 members of the “Singapore Theatre Community” criticised the reasons given by Ms Ng.
In a statement to the media then, the group said that the “sole criterion” for the allocation of funds should be “works of high artistic merit.”
“We urge the NAC to revise and update its funding guidelines to better serve the expectations and aspirations of Singaporeans. NAC’s priority should be directed towards developing Singapore’s potential as a world-class city for the arts, and not towards developing the potential of a statutory board—entrusted with public money—as an organ of social control.” – Arts group, May 2010.
Two years since that episode, the Government seems not to have moved from its position.
Straitjacket prosecutorial decision not the way to go
The following is a letter by Mr Vincent Law was sent to the TODAY newspaper, which declined to publish it. The letter was also sent to the Straits Times.
Last week, AG Steven Cheong launched an initiative to help prosecutors, noting that the public is now more willing to scrutinise prosecutorial decisions and issued a timely reminder that prosecutors should exercise greater care and consideration in making those decisions as they “have the potential to deeply affect an accused person’s life, and in particular his individual rights and liberties” to avoid “unmeritorious prosecutions and consequently undermine public confidence in the criminal justice system.”
While welcomed, it is worth considering why the general public is now more vocal and willing to express disagreement or dissatisfaction with some of those decisions.
A case in point is the recent judgement on the four ex-SMRT drivers from China who "received jail terms of between six and seven weeks for instigating an illegal strike last November that caused inconvenience to the public."
Workers made false claims, MOM?
By Andrew Loh
Two days after the two Chinese workers – dubbed the “crane protesters” by the media – were sentenced to jail, the Ministry of Manpower said the men had made “false claims”. One of the reasons why the men staged the protest was because of poor living conditions.
The Straits Times reported the ministry’s position thus:
“A spokesman said MOM inspectors visited the men's last place of residence - a container at Fishery Port Road in Jurong - on Dec 12 and found it complied with ‘approved housing requirements and were assessed to be satisfactory’.”
"That’s pretty unbelievable, don’t you think?”
By Woo Wei Ling
We die how we live—that is one of the subtexts of the new documentary Bukit Brown Voices. The film opens with shots of densely packed HDB blocks, and ends with footage of Mandai Columbarium, where a family cremates a relative’s exhumed remains; tiny cubicles for the living and the dead respectively are stacked in seemingly endless and sterile geometric constructions, mirroring each other. But between these filmic bookends, the star of the film is Bukit Brown, the 200-hectare, jungle-like Chinese cemetery located in the heart of Singapore’s urban cityscape.
Today marks the start of Qing Ming and the final tomb-sweeping festival before nearly 4000 graves are officially exhumed at the cemetery to make way for an 8-lane expressway, which will change the landscape of Singapore’s oldest Chinese cemetery—and the largest outside of China—forever. One year ago, filmmakers Brian McDairmant and Su-Mae Khoo sought to capture the last graveside tomb-sweeping rituals for some families who would be affected by the exhumation order, and the resultant footage became Bukit Brown Voices.
Abortion vs Adoption – People’s well being should come first
By AWARE (Association of Women for Action and Research)
AWARE welcomes Minister Chan Chun Sing’s recent statements on abortion, affirming that the decision whether to terminate a pregnancy or bring it to term is a highly personal one, which can only be made by each pregnant person for themselves.
We refer to the Straits Times article, “From adoption to abortion” (March 17). The article reported that experts felt “the law could be changed to make those seeking abortion think harder and longer” and that the process of dealing with patients seeking abortion should aim to “persuade more to keep their babies”.
Laws and procedures on abortion should have no aim other than to protect the rights and health of patients, and definitely should not interfere with patients’ reproductive freedom in the name of national agendas to increase fertility.
Abused and exploited - but now in jail
This is the story of the two Chinese construction workers who staged a protest last December, as told to us by the 2 men themselves.
By Irene Lee & Bernard Lim
Pay issues were not the only reasons why two construction workers from China perched themselves on top of cranes in protest last December. They were unhappy and had suffered enough. They had nobody to turn to, to resolve their problems. Both men were frustrated and desperate.
Wu Xiaolin, 47, and Zhu Guilei, 24, are both from Lianyungang, a small city in Jiangsu Province, China. The two men have worked for Zhong Jiang International, a construction company. They lived in containers located on various construction sites. Their so-called “room" was, they told us, infested by mosquitoes, bedbugs, cockroaches and the occasional rats. They also had to share the space with 7 to 12 other men.
The most horrible part, they say, would be trying to rest during their off-shift hours in the afternoon when the container would heat up, as there was no ventilation. According to them, their “rooms” had no windows and the company did not provide fans. The deafening noise from the ongoing construction did not make things easier. When the men were not in the containers, they would be housed at the basement of a building site where they would be working at. These too would have similar pest problems. When it rained, living conditions would worsen, as it would cause a mini-flood. “Everyday I was tired,” Zhu said.
One-sided views about online postings do not help
By Andrew Loh
“In January this year, following the horrific accident in Tampines that claimed the lives of the two young brothers, photographs showing the mangled state of their bodies were circulated rapidly on the Internet.
“The photographs made a spectacle out of a tragedy and robbed their family of the privacy and dignity that they deserved. This is only one incident.
“The recent sex-corruption cases have seen photographs of innocent women circulated on the Internet speculating whether they were involved.”
The above quote is taken from Member of Parliament Hri Kumar’s speech in Parliament. Kumar cited the two incidents to support his call for the government to “act against hateful conduct online.” In my view, Kumar's citation of the 2 incidents are rather one-sided and incomplete.
Kumar has apparently ignored certain facts about the two incidents, namely:
1. In the Tampines accident, as noted by researcher Carol Soon of the Institute of Policy Studies: "Soon after the photographs were posted, prominent bloggers and forum participants questioned the motives and the need for sharing such pictures. They called on the online community to show greater respect to the family of the boys who died."
2. In the second case Kumar cited, “photographs of innocent women” being circulated online is not peculiar to the Internet. In fact, the mainstream media had camped out and harassed the innocent women friends and colleagues of former Workers’ Party MP Yaw Shin Leong in 2012 – and had splashed their photos in their newspapers which reached millions of readers.
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