General International LGBTQ+ News Solidarity

A Series Of Solidarity Protests For An Autistic Trans Woman… In A Country Where Protests Are Illegal

08/21/2023
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The war and genocide against trans lives is erupting full–force not only across the US but beyond as well. On 29th May 2023, Uganda made “serial offenders” of “aggravated homosexuality” criminally prosecutable and punishable by the death penalty. Multiple reports, such as this and this, have directly connected what’s just happened in Uganda with years of Christian far–right evangelical influence and funding from the US. Open Democracy has published an exposé revealing that the US Christian far–right has poured over $54 million into anti–LGBT efforts across the entire continent of Africa, with $20 million having been dedicated to Uganda alone over the span of a decade.
In total, the US Christian far–right have poured at least $280 million around the world to support their political agenda globally, with the usual dog whistles of being pro–life and pro–family.
According to an article by journalist Nana Ama Agyemang Asante “Since 2007, U.S.–based right–wing Christian groups have spent more than $280 million fighting gay and abortion rights abroad. More than $50 million has gone toward courting African politicians and religious leaders and funding programs that oppose sexual and reproductive rights throughout the continent. Aside from lobbying politicians to pass anti–homosexuality laws, groups such as Heartbeat International have established “pregnancy crisis centers” in South Africa, Uganda and Nigeria to promote anti–abortion ideology.”
We previously reported that a similar situation of an attempted Christian far–right takeover with links to New Jersey and the larger United States is unfolding in the tiny country of Singapore, located in Southeast Asia. Queer activist Carissa Cheow has documented and publicly detailed the specifics of the organizations involved, one of which is in fact Princeton New Jersey–based conservative think tank the Witherspoon Institute– which “has a long history of funding research that supports far–right objectives”.
Since the publication of Carissa’s first and second letters, not one, two, but three, trans solidarity protests have occurred in Singapore, under the banner of and . This is major as protests are criminalized and policed in Singapore; one man holding up just a smiley face sign on a piece of cardboard resulted in investigations by the police in 2020. That three separate trans solidarity protests have taken place in Singapore is significant in such a high–risk and draconian context and political climate.

Who, then, is Harvey? Why and ?
Further background on Harvey’s case can be found here.
According to the Justice4Harvey Instagram account, Vickreman Harvey Chettiar is “an autistic, Tamil, transgender woman in Singapore”, who’s been seeking justice for a rape that occurred almost a decade ago, in 2014, while she was placed in a male
remand ward in Singapore’s main and sole mental healthcare institution, the Institute of Mental Health. After a police report about her rape amounted to nothing, Harvey filed a lawsuit against the Institute of Mental Health’s parent company, the National Healthcare Group – which is owned by the Ministry of Health in Singapore. In other words, Harvey took a major public institution to court. The case dragged on for around five years, before finally being struck out, meaning that Harvey ultimately still has not seen justice for her rape.

Justice4Harvey writes that the law firm Legal Clinic LLC representing the National Healthcare Group furthermore turned to corrupt methods to ensure that Harvey would never be able to re–open her lawsuit against them in the future, and to ensure that Harvey would be isolated from possible support networks and spaces, including human rights activist groups and non–profit organizations. Harvey has been condemned and outcast by liberal, reactionary, assimilationist and cryptofascist pro–state and pro–capital gays ever since, who treat Singapore’s version of Pride not even as a protest – let alone a riot – but as a pro– cop celebratory affair to pander to the good will of the state.

Because of her insistence on seeking justice for her rape, even at the cost of battling national institutions, Harvey has been a target of the state. Her positionality – a visibly and vocally loud and proud trans woman, notwithstanding her being Tamil and autistic in ways that subvert social scripts, respectability politics, and colonial–capitalist expectations of conformity and compliance – has also put her on the radar of the Christian far–right in Singapore, including those who occupy political and legal positions.

On 5 May 2023, Harvey’s bail was unexpectedly revoked and she was remanded again to the Institute of Mental Health, the very site of her rape in 2014. This was unexpected and abnormal because her arraignment at court had happened in an unusually accelerated and eager speed, and she’d already previously been certified as mentally fit to plead.

As it turned out, this was a set–up by Christian far–right actors in high positions of authority, including Singapore’s own Attorney–General Lucien Wong Yuen Kuai and notorious fascist transphobe Carol Loi Pui Wan, who had in 2020 infiltrated a trans–affirming student group in Singapore and mobilized over 10,000 Christian far–right sympathizers against it.

The Christian far–right had orchestrated Operation Poison Ivy to ensure that prosecutors at her court arraignment would apply for her bail to revoked and for her to be sent to the Institute of Mental Health.

Taking advantage of the fact that Harvey would be traumatized simply for being at the site of her rape, Operation Poison Ivy was “to coercively extract a false testimony” from Harvey, against another non–binary target of theirs, Wong J–min, in exchange for a quicker release from the Institute of Mental Health. Wong J–min, who is only 21 years old, is now a refugee in the UK due to Christian far–right queerphobic persecution.

“It’s been only 2 days here but it feels like weeks. I’ve tried to pray but I can’t focus,” Harvey said to friends, over a 15–minute call that is permitted once a week. This proved the Christian far–right’s calculations of Harvey’s trauma correct.

However, Harvey ultimately did not provide false testimony, and was released from the Institute of Mental Health only on 12 May 2023.

Yet, at her bail review, Harvey’s own pro bono defense lawyer requested for non–standard bail conditions to be added as clauses, upon the advice of “Harvey’s pastor from Church of Our Savior” – an infamously Christian far–right church that Harvey has never even been to, and that is known to be part of Operation High Tide. In 2009, Church of Our Savior, which runs conversion therapy programs, also attempted to aggressively coup a moderate feminist organization, which was simply trying to roll out a more progressive and informative sex education curriculum as an alternative to dominating versions that promoted abstinence, anti–abortion stances and gender essentialism.

Harvey is currently out on bail, but is still not safe, as these non–standard bail conditions are absurd: One mandates Harvey to return to the Institute of Mental Health for treatment and the
other mandates her to delete her social media posts and applications. This cuts her off from networks of meaningful relationships that she’s built up on social media over the years, including friends from other parts of the world. This also completely silences her, and denies and erases her truth. Harvey
has been publicly smeared by state media and she has no means to respond, clarify or assert her own story.

The Singaporean state, the Christian far–right, and their overlaps, are trying to turn Harvey into a scapegoat for their own respective narratives: firstly, for speaking her own truth to power; secondly, for daring to push the police and legal system to their limits under an authoritarian system that expects immediate submission and surrender; thirdly, for being persistent in her desire for justice as a rape victim who was raped at a psychiatric facility that is also state–run; and fourthly, for being a trans woman who refuses to keel over and die – who actually wants to not only survive and scrape by, but live.

This is not a case of just US imperialist interests, but US Christian far–right imperialist interests, which pursue expansionist goals to broaden the [capitalist] American Christian “nation”, historically positioned as a moral counterforce to the evils of communism, in the style of American exceptionalism. This is why Singapore was prophesized by American evangelicals as their prized “Antioch” of Asia – as a gateway to the rest of the world– and why US Christian far–right funding has been channeled towards the country, backing the Singaporean Christian far–right.

When people who want you dead come for your throat, it is not just to strangle you but silence you. What happens when trans folks refuse, resist and retaliate? For once, the state and the Christian far–right in Singapore find themselves confronted by someone on the margins of the margins who demands to be seen as a complex human being, and who refuses to say OK to violence and oppression that have been naturalized in their weaponization against trans bodies, spirits and existences, both individual and collective, without a fight.

Three trans solidarity protests have occurred in Singapore, under the banner of and . Protestors in Singapore are at risk of persecution by the state, further spurred on by the Christian far–right.

Be in solidarity with Singaporeans facing violence. Be in solidarity with trans people worldwide. We all share in the same struggle – against capital, against fascism, in search and creation of a better world. It has to be fought for, and it can be won. A new world, from the ashes of the old.

Fuck Operation High Tide. . rvey. Respect existence or expect resistance.