Fridae

A gay male immigrant from Singapore has been granted a new trial before an Immigration Judge on his asylum petition to determine whether he has a reasonable fear of persecution if he were forced to return to his home country, according to the New York based Gay City News magazine.

The report said that the US Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruling on Oct 4 is the latest of several in which federal appeals courts found that Immigration Judges and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) have overlooked or ignored evidence of anti-gay policies and practices abroad.

Yeoh was first denied asylum by an Immigration Judge and the BIA, and was refused "withholding of removal" status which would grant the person the right to remain in the US and work legally but not to apply for legal permanent residence.

The Immigration Judge concluded that there is "no evidence that the government of Singapore is actively seeking out and prosecuting homosexual relationships or individuals engaging in those relationships," and there is "no evidence at all presented that the government of Singapore is prosecuting homosexuals for private acts."

The report also noted that the Immigration Judge (IJ) did not consider nor mention the other documents Yeoh presented such as gay men being "singled out" under laws that could also apply to heterosexual conduct and the penal code's criminalisation of "the abetting of certain male-to-male sexual activity and criminal sentencing rules that allow for penalties against gay men "disproportionate" to their crimes."

Yeoh was referring to Section 377A of the Singapore Penal Code which reads "any male person who, in public or private, commits, or abets the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 2 years."

While Yeoh also mentioned the practice of plainclothes police officers posing as decoys to arrest gay men who approach them, the last known case was in 1994 when a man was charged under section 354 for molesting an undercover police decoy by touching the policeman's penis.

The man was originally sentenced to four months' imprisonment and three strokes of the cane, however he appealed and the sentencing was reversed and a fine of S$2000 (US$1,260) was imposed. In November 1993, 12 men were nabbed in an anti-gay operation which involved plainclothes officers as decoys. The men whose names, ages and occupations were reported in the press received between two to six months in jail and all were given three strokes of the rotan cane.

When contacted by Fridae and asked whether gay men would be justified in saying that they have a reasonable fear of persecution in the city-state, Alex Au of Singapore's People Like Us group said: "For asylum purposes usually (and understandably) the applicant has to show a real fear of direct persecution by the government. While S.377 and S.377A may undergird a climate of prejudice and discrimination, not just social, but also in terms of how the bureaucrats apply bias in their jobs, it's difficult to treat such discrimination as equivalent to persecution."

Although the last known case of police entrapment was over a decade ago, gays and lesbians in Singapore are still subjected to discrimination and harassment. People Like Us, a gay advocacy group, has been refused by the Registrar of Societies twice when they tried to register a society. Gay events have also been subject to intense scrutiny by the authorities in the recent years, large-scale events have been denied permits for being "contrary to public interest" while several organisers of events that were part of the recent gay IndigNation festival were repeatedly "interviewed" by the Police about their events - although they were not required to apply for permits.