Port of Spain day 3

Monday, 23 November 2009:

Readers may be wondering what I am doing in Trinidad and Tobago. I am attending two conferences back to back. The first one, which started today, is the Commonwealth People’s Forum (CPF), which is the civil society meeting held just in advance of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Summit (CHOGM) planned for later this week.

The purpose of the CPF is to bring together civil society activists from around the Commonwealth, to draw up a list of priority issues and suggestions which will be handed to the 53 Commonwealth leaders when they meet.

There are about 500 participants registered for the CPF, from various countries of the grouping, from Belize to Botswana, India to Australia. Naturally, 500 is too large a number to hold any meaningful discussions, and our interests vary widely. So the CPF is divided into eight parallel streams (called ‘Assemblies’), meeting in different rooms. The Assembly I signed up for is Human Rights. Other Assemblies include Financial Crisis and Economic Development, Deepening Democracy and Governance, Environment and Climate Change, Health, etc.

This morning was the first session, with some speechmaking. In the afternoon, we broke into regional groups and an interactive format, with calls for suggestions from the floor. Ending up as the rapporteur for the Asian countries, I raised a number of issues which our region want included in the outcome statement for the leaders:

• Freedom of expression; freedom of the press – review laws that restrict them
• Freedom of association, including the right to form trade unions and bargain collectively – free up the laws and regulations
• Freedom of assembly – the right to stage protests to bring grievances to public notice
• More professional and citizen-friendly policing – purge corruption, abuse of power and the overly-deferential (to political masters) behaviour of police forces
• Better access to justice – speedy justice, less deferential judiciary
• Remove repressive laws – on above freedoms, and on detention without trial

And of course,

• Equal rights for and non-discrimination laws that include gay, lesbian, bisexual and trasngendered persons.

Other regions contributed slightly different ideas. The African delegates seemed more focussed on land rights and environmental damage, as well as access to education and health. The Caribbean delegates spoke about equal rights for the disabled. From somewhere came a call for a ban on the death penalty – something I agree with but forgot to raise.

All regions raised the issue of gay equality. This was no accident though. A strong gay caucus was organised for the CPF, comprising gay activists from 12 countries. Thus, we were distributed across all the regional sub-discussions. Now, the next step (for tomorrow) is to get at least one of us onto the drafting committee, so that the point about gay equality is not diluted or left out of the final statement.

* * * * *

At the start of the conference today, I found myself sitting next to a local delegate, from Trinidad. We introduced ourselves to each other. She was from an Islamic women’s group, and from what I discovered out of three or four follow-up questions, they work with disadvantaged women on empowerment and livelihood issues.

“And where are you from?” she asked me.

“Singapore,” I said.

“And your group?”

“It’s called People Like Us. We’re a gay and lesbian advocacy group.”

She had nothing to say. No follow-up questions. In fact, I sensed that she shifted a centimetre or two away from me.

* * * * *

Most suggestions from the floor – about civil rights, access of education, justice – were nothing new. It’s just that many countries in the Commonwealth, Singapore included, observe these concepts more in the breach than to the letter. That’s why demands d to be repeated.

There was however, one suggestion from the floor that made people sit up. A woman rose to say she wanted the rights of the unborn child to be included in among the human rights concerns. The language – ‘rights of the unborn child’ – tells you where she was coming from: the same people who speak about ‘alternative lifestyles’ being an abomination against the (Christian) god.

While it is true that the question of abortion is not cut and dried, she betrayed herself by going hyperbolic, about how outrageous things have become: “abortions of babies even at eight or nine months!” Was she serious? Babies are able to survive when delivered at eight or nine months.

And what about the right of a woman to control her own body?

Here we go again. We’ve got faith groups to deal with.

Port of Spain day 2

Sunday, 22 November 2009:

Although Trinidad’s climate is similar to Singapore’s and Malaysia’s, its urban response to climate is quite different. Unlike Asian cities, the capital, Port of Spain, is not characterised by rows of shophouses with a continuous covered arcade. Instead, the town is an agglomeration mostly of stand-alone buildings each within its own compound and behind chain fences or high walls. Typically, the buildings are just two or three stories. There are at most five or six streets where shops are joined by party walls and open directly onto the street, rather than stand back from it. Even then, the shops seldom provide an extended roof to cover the walkway in front, so sidewalks are completely exposed to sun and rain.

Some office buildings in Port of Spain

Port of Spain day 1

Saturday, 21 November 2009:

There goes another perfectly good leather belt. It began with three belt loops. After two years of going through airport security at various cities, all three have been dropped on the floor around the world. I don’t know why I never remember NOT to wear a belt when flying; a belt is a habit I don’t seem to break.

New York day 7

Friday, 20 November 2009:

As we were making our way through Little Italy, looking for a cafe where we might have some dessert and a coffee, we passed a doorman to an Italian restaurant. Instead of trying to interest us in his establishment like other doormen did, he shouted, virtually into my ears. I turned around, startled. My fight or flight reflex quickly booted up.

But he wasn’t addressing me. He was talking to the doorman of another restaurant across the narrow street. Theirs was an across-the-street type of conversation.

New York day 6

Thursday, 19 November 2009:

Let me first take up the comment by The Catman. The essence of the comment is true: the “social and cultural facets of life is Singapore is at a relatively young and nascent stage.” My perennial concern is how this fact, while true, is brandished by some people (I do not imply The Catman) to justify an attitude of Singapore exceptionalism. By that, I mean a refusal to compare Singapore with other cities or countries, because “our conditions are different”. Don’t compare our freedoms (or lack thereof) with the West, because we are different. Don’t compare our sultified arts and entertainment scene because as a people we are different. A banal truth is used to avoid measure, to avoid looking ourselves in the mirror.

It is this resistance that worries me for Singapore’s own development and why I feel compelled to keep on comparing.

New York day 5

Wednesday, 18 November 2009:

It is easy to deride the New York urban rail system, here called the subway, as old and unreliable. Some even think it unsafe. In truth, there is much it can be proud of.  It is not altogether fair to compare it to brand new systems like Singapore’s, the first line for which came into service only in 1987.

The subway’s tunnels and stations were built in a different age with different technology. Difficult as it is to dig tunnels and underground stations in a built-up environment – just think of the disruption caused when our Northeast line was being built – it is far more so expanding existing tunnels and stations  while having to continue running services through them and when the surrounding area is even more built up. You’d hardly blame any administration for not even trying to do that. If so, a hundred years from now, would our tunnels and underground stations still be largely the same that we have today? Quite possibly. Who would be laughing at Singapore’s old and archaic metro system then?

New York day 4

Tuesday, 17 November 2009:

There was a protest on the steps of City Hall at lunchtime today. It is so completely different from the image trotted out by the Singapore government – unruly, disruptive, violent – that it even looked like a protest our government might live with.

City Hall is normally cordoned off; you cannot get within 100 metres of the building without a pass. This, I figure, is so roadside bombs cannot damage it. But that also means that holding a protest on its steps puts the event out of reach of ordinary people. So there we were, standing at the cordon 100 metres away, squinting our eyes to make out that the placards said. All I could see was something about restaurant workers. Meanwhile a crew from some news channel was setting up its camera, and when they were ready, the protesting group – about 40 to 50 of them – arranged themselves on the steps of City Hall, like it was some high school picture. They shouted a few times for sound effect, but I couldn’t catch a word.

New York day 3

Monday, 16 November 2009:

Two o’clock in the afternoon. On 8th Avenue, this guy with a clipboard and a slingbag approached me. “Do you have a moment, sir?” he asked. I stopped. In the West, I respond less defensively than I would in Singapore.

He was from Greenpeace and was canvassing for support for a proposal to build a wind farm off the coast of Long Island. In this age of global warming, anything that boosts renewable energy can’t be a bad thing. We got to talking a bit and he explained that the Massachusetts government has recently approved a wind farm off its coast, with some 80 per cent support from citizens and residents. Greenpeace in New York would like to replicate the campaign for the Long Island proposal. He had in his sling bag brochures and a petition for signing. Alas, since I wasn’t resident in New York, it didn’t make sense for me to sign.

New York day 2

Sunday, 15 November 2009:

I take what I said back. It’s only in certain neighbourhoods that we see fascinating shops, though I was surprised where some of these were found. In the Lower East Side, a precinct of run-down tenement blocks with a high proportion of new immigrants from China, the Dominican Republic and goodness knows where, there’s a street of art galleries. In Brooklyn, there was a shop specialising in art books and another that advertised 200 kinds of pickles. One hundred apparently was not enough.

Most of today though, the only shops I saw were mundane ones such as convenience stores, drugstores, and shops selling pizzas or running shoes. Canal Street was even worse. It’s busier than I remember it – but the wrong kind of busy. It is half a mile of kitschy stuff, cheap perfume and “I love New York” T-shirts. Touts offered satchel bags, socks, costume jewelry - and in one case, diamond rings, or so he said. They didn’t hassle, but they tended to obstruct the smooth flow of pedestrians – who were many indeed – so walking down that street wasn’t a pleasant experience. However, it was an aural delight; every three paces you’d hear a different language, often two or three languages at the same time. In the right ear is a language from the Indian subcontinent. In the left, Vietnamese and an African tongue is competing for your attention. Only one in twenty of the people on that street were White, presumbaly English-speaking. They mostly kept quiet, perhaps intimidated by the tsunami of immigrants into the area.

New York day 1

Saturday, 14 November 2009:

I heard him even as I was looking for my assigned seat. In heavy German accent, he was explaining to the cabin stewards what he’d like them to do – to move other passengers around so that couples in his tour group could sit together. They must have checked in late and many couples were split up.

The stewards said it was a bad idea at that point in time. Let people find their assigned seats first and see what else can be done. In the end, not much, because the flight was almost full. I was one of the few who had a vacant seat next to me, which made me a target.

The German came to me in a cloud of bad breath and asked if I would give up my aisle seat and move to a seat sandwiched between two persons near a window. That way a couple from his group could sit together – my seat and the vacant seat next to mine.