Police entrapment of gay cruising spots in Singapore
For more than 16 years, there has not been a single entrapment conducted by the Singapore police in regard to gay cruising activities at popular haunts. Looks like this is going to change with the recent report in the New Paper:
On May 4, the police conducted an anti-vice operation at the old cemetery along Jalan Kubor, an area known for vice. The police declined to to give details of the vice activities.
A plainclothes policeman was standing alone in a poorly lit spot when he was approached by Jagadiswaran Krisnan, 32, a coffee house supervisor, at about 10.40pm. Jagadiswaran struck up a conversation with the undercover cop.
Two other police officers were stationed a short distance away, ready to provide help.
While talking to the officer, Jagadiswaran, a Malaysian, moved closer to him. He told the officer that he was there “to have fun”.
Then, he suddenly raised his hand and stroked the officer’s chest and private parts.
That was when the undercover cop identified himself and, with the help of his colleagues, arrested the man. Jagadiswaran was charged with behaving in an indecent manner in a public place. He was fined $1,000 on Tuesday.
So, with the above departure, would Singapore police be conducting such regular "entrapment activities" from now on? You decide.
Gay massage & fitness centres raided by police
Days before the raid, TV3's 999 programme showed a 7-minute clip of a reporter going undercover with a concealed camera in a gay massage centre and a raid on an establishment in Cheras where the authorities stormed occupied private rooms.
First, a gay fitness centre at a shopping mall in Pulau Tikus, Penang was raided by police on Friday night. Seven men - a caretaker and six workers - aged between 20 and 30 were arrested. The report quoted Penang CID Chief SAC II Wan Abdullah Tunku Said as saying that police also seized three towels, massage oil, tissue boxes and a tube of lubrication jelly believed to be used during gay activities.
Next, the same weekend, police raided another 2 massage centres in Kuala Lumpur. Upon entry into the premise, they found the walls of the centres were plastered with pictures of male masseurs available to serve male clients. A total of 25 male clients were detained during the raid at the two centres which were equipped with closed-circuit television at the main entrance where clients were only admitted into the centres after giving a password.
4,000 attended Pink Dot 2010 at Hong Lim Park
Over 4,000 people turned up and turned Hong Lim Park pink as a show of support for their LGBT friends, family and community, and made it the largest event ever held at the urban park.
It broke last year's record and made prime-time news the same night – marking the first time a gay (supportive) event received coverage on local television.
The 30-second clip on Singapore-based Channel NewsAsia showed participants in a carnival-like atmosphere and cultural performances at Hong Lim Park where over 4,000 people turned up to show their support for the gay community by forming a huge pink human dot on Saturday. The record turnout makes Pink Dot 2010 the largest public gathering at Speakers’ Corner, Singapore’s only government-designated venue for public assembly and free speech where a police permit is not required. The inaugural Pink Dot event, held at the same venue last year, was attended by 2,500 people.
Read more about it here.
‘Amphetamine’ is about male love, rape & censorship
The Hong Kong censors last month demanded five cuts to a male rape scene in Hong Kong director Scud's new film Amphetamine if to be shown at cinemas after its Asian premiere at the HKIFF (Hong Kong International Film Festival).
The Hong Kong censor (the Television and Licensing Authority – TELA) classified the film as III (for those over 18 only) for the Festival.
All seemed well, and the film was due to open in commercial cinemas on the 8th, but for this it needed another license, and inexplicably this time the TELA demanded five cuts, each of five to six seconds, in the crucial scene, a male rape.
The story of the film centres around the addictions in love and drugs of its fallen angel, swimming instructor Kafka (played by the very cute Byron Pang), a straight man who finds himself in a love affair with a gay executive, Daniel (the more classically handsome Thomas Price). The film is a dark meditation on love and its bonds, on death, betrayal and the loss of innocence, and, without giving too much of the story away, the scene in which Kafka is raped forms the crux of much of what happens thereafter.
The issue upon which the TELA (Television and Licensing Authority) censored the film, according to the fax by which they announced their decision on 24 March to Artwalker, was the depiction of pain on the face of the rape victim, not the rape itself. The TELA ordered them to delete the close up of the painful reaction on the male protagonist's face on each of the five occasions it was shown. Yet they allowed the rape itself to remain. So, it’s official, male rape and torture are OK, as long as the victim isn’t seen to be objecting to it.