20150705- A Tale of 2 Gatherings 2 Speeches - The Amos Act
A Tale of Two Gatherings on 5/7/2015....
Above at Sports Hub with more than 50,000 Christians gathered to celebrate the nation's 50th Jubilee year
Above elsewhere at Hong Lim Park, about 500 people gathered to garner the support of the release of a 16-year old Amos Yee who had been imprisoned in both the prison and Institute of Mental Health for over 50 days...
This is the text from the speech of this lady Jolene on 5/7/2015. And below the other excerpt from our PM. Have a read and compare the state of this situation that had caught the eye of almost the whole world now.
Red dot celebrated her Jubilee with more that 50,000 Christians huddled in the new air-con Sports Hub. While there was another group of 500 folks gathered in the open field of Hong Lim under the scorching hot sun. Many pastors were gathered at the Hub but there was only perhaps one pastor Miak who gave a short speech after Jolene's at HL . To my surprise he was one from the Free Community Church - the church that is controversial in the LGBT thingy. And he shared about how he got to know Amos last year when this young lad was moving from church to church as most people did in the norm. He ended sharing the fable of the Emperor's New Clothes. A Day of Reflection after these 2 events that took place on a Sunday in this little sunny island aka beloved Red Dot:
Freedom is something many take for granted especially if one had not gone behind any bars or any mental institution.
Such institutions rob the person of the basic right of liberty - simply your life is no longer your own.
I had the opportunity to be in Changi Women's prison for some supervision of equipment years back. The squatting toilets had no doors! and you pee in the open for all to see.
And I too had a first hand witness of a late friend who was admitted to IMH@ Buangkok . Though hers was not at Block 7 for the worst case mental folks, it was already a bad experience for me back then - seeing the ladies "walking here and there aimlessly" in the most spartan room.
In both institutions, utensils or stationery stuff are tightly controlled for obvious reasons.
We have perhaps seen movies like "One flew over the Cuckoo" nest starring Jack Nicholson. The brain washing process. What is in the reel is actually real.
Last Sunday sermon on worship was well summarised in the word called "WILL". Worship is never about the songs we sing as we enter the 'so-called house of worship' in a church building. The art of worship begins in the heart of the person who exercises the freewill to do so regardless of where one is and how or what one is feeling or for the matter of fact how it is done. When Paul was imprisoned in the prison, the 4 walls did not deter him from exercising his will to sing praise to the Lord YHWH. And we read of his & Silas subsequent miracle release from prison as a free man-in both the body and spirit. (Acts 16)
Will - it is the mental faculty by which one deliberately chooses or decide on a certain course of action.
Conscience - it is an aptitude or faculty intuition or judgement that assists in distinguishing right from wrong.
This Amos Yee saga made me realised the importance of the term " Prisoner of conscience". Something new to me in fact. And as I reflected this after watching the news of this young boy's release after spending over 50 days more in both prison and IMH, his ruffled look and expressionless face seemed to bore the effect of the 'breaking of one's will' by the tactics used in such institutions. It would take a while for sure for this young man to heal from this ordeal.
Nuggets to chew on...:-
The 500 vs the 50,000 odd people reminded me of Gideon's warrior men where the Lord chose from 30,000 down to 300 men to fight the Midianite in Judges 7. The Lord did not allow Israel to boast on the strength of the army but He sifted and the separated only the few fearless men fit to fight the enemy!
2. Like Amos, Paul in Acts 16, he threw the city into an uproar and was sent to prison cell with feet in the stocks. The earthquake came and caused the Jailor to fall in trembling asking what must be done to be saved. And despite that Paul and Silas could have ran for their life - they did not. What did Paul say to the officers " They beat us publicly without a trial even though they were Roman citizens, and threw us into prison. And now they want to get rid of us quietly> No! Let them come and escort us up!" Paul was imprisoned wrongly! {perhaps now the legal Advisor of Amos is now appealing to the High court on this decision ruling?)
3. The egg has been fried. There is no way of the fried egg turning back to its original raw stage. Our PM urged us to "building trust and mutual confidence with other religious groups, between the groups as well as between the leaders, so that we can live harmoniously together and solve problems amicably and cooperatively together," he said.
"For this 50th jubilee year, let us make Singapore an enduring home, an endearing home, a home for all regardless of race, of language, of religion," he added.
Question : Can Red dot do now? What do you think? Jolene Tan’s speech for #FreeAmosYee protest at Hong Lim Park, 5 July 2015
Some of you have probably seen that Amos Yee’s mother, Mary Toh, recently posted on Facebook making a heartfelt apology to her son.
It’s really not her who should be apologising to Amos Yee.
We – us, our state, our society – we are destroying a boy.
Don’t retreat to the law here. Think about what is happening to the human bodies and minds involved. The law isn’t something abstract. If we think about the law as somehow above humans, it will very quickly become inhuman or worse, anti-human.
So let’s stick to the basics, which are: we are destroying a boy.
The main question I want to ask today is, why are we destroying a boy? What good does it do to destroy him?
Let me explain first what I mean about destruction. The state’s decision to prosecute Amos Yee has inherently involved violence. First, arrest. Then, imprisonment. Shackles. The terror and the powerlessness of not knowing how much longer you’ll be in there, with no company, no purpose, no activity, no relationships, no change.
It goes beyond that, we’ve heard: there were no nights and no days, just the same walls of the cell, 23 hours a day. The glare of lights that never go out.
Even aside from this case, this raises serious questions about prison practice in Singapore. When I worked in a prisoners’ rights organisation in the UK, one thing I learned was that remand should not be a punitive experience. Remand prisoners are either not yet guilty of any crime, or, in Amos’ case, are not yet found by a court to deserve a prison sentence. So, as a simple matter of fairness, when someone is in remand to prevent them from absconding, the conditions in prison should not be further punishing them. They should have better conditions than prisoners on sentence.
And whatever the type of prisoner, remand or sentence, being kept in a cell 23 hours a day shows severe failure in the prison system. This quantity of confinement is completely destructive of physical and psychological well-being of prisoners and of prisoners’ ability to later function in the community.
Given this, it is testimony to Amos Yee’s phenomenal resilience that he kept smiling and waving and eating bananas in the courtroom as long as he did.
But he isn’t any longer. Because it doesn’t matter how strong you are. No one can be ground like this by the gears of the criminal justice machine, trapped without sense or clarity, and hold out forever. Sooner or later it will crush you. It is crushing Amos now. He has already spoken of distress so deep he wanted to kill himself.
Just initiating a prosecution, just setting this whole machine into motion, had these severe consequences. So don’t doubt it: we are destroying a boy.
But it’s gone even further than this. We’ve heard – and the state has not denied – that the response to Amos Yee’s distress was to strap him to a bed for more than a day. Sure, that’s going to make him feel a lot better.
And now he’s being detained in IMH, in conditions which are not centred on his needs and which are also likely to hurt his well-being. I don’t want to speculate on the claims that he has poor mental heath or autism – things which in the public’s mind are now being wrongly conflated with criminality, stigmatising people with autism or mental illness further. I just want to point out that, whatever the truth about Amos Yee, shutting someone up in an institution is a very problematic way to respond to alleged mental health or autism-related needs.
Autism is not an illness. It is not something to cure or treat. And poor mental health is almost never improved by institutionalisation. Taking people out of the community against their will should always be a last resort. What’s happened to Amos Yee and how it’s being reported is sending the message to society at large that physical force, physical restraint, isolation against their will and general dehumanisation are how to respond to people with mental health needs or autism. From the viewpoint of public awareness for these communities, this is a disaster.
So we are destroying a boy. And we are hurting vulnerable people.
Which brings me back to the first question I asked. Why? Why are we doing this? What human purpose is served? Knowing that prosecution is in itself a tool which inflicts so much suffering, knowing that the criminal justice system has enormous consequences for anyone caught up in it – when and how can we justify its use?
This whole affair came from a few minutes when a sixteen-year-old decided to vent about parents, God and “The System”. Frankly, this kind of venting is part of the proper and natural order of things. There is nothing more ordinary in the world than indignant teenagers goading authority with the aid of tasteless sexual metaphors. There was no incitement to violence or hatred, no demonisation of anyone vulnerable. In terms of threats to human society or human welfare, Amos Yee’s video pretty much ranks up there with kittens clawing the curtains.
The fact is, this society is not of one mind about Lee Kuan Yew or political ideology – and it shouldn’t be of one mind. Politics, and political leaders, are there precisely as a way for us to peaceably navigate the fact of our differences. We are all different, we’ve had different lives, we’ve have different amounts of money, we have different hearts, different bodies, different needs, we want different things, we worship differently or not at all. We each want society to be set up in different ways.
The hope that underlies democracy is that we can commit to navigating those differences peacefully. Through dialogue. The hope of democracy is that, despite our differences, we all count equally, and will all have the space and the chance to discuss and negotiate and be taken into account.
Only if we speak openly about things can we figure out how, together, to make them better for everyone.
It is hard to shake the sense that we are destroying Amos Yee simply because he highlighted a political difference that has been deemed unacceptable by those currently in power. The fact is, many people do think that Lee Kuan Yew was, in Amos Yee’s words, a horrible person. There are many people who wanted – desperately wanted – to see the end of Lee Kuan Yew’s influence on society. And everyone should have the right to express their opinions about the country’s political leadership and directions, without being silenced by the criminal law. The prosecution of Amos Yee casts serious doubt on the protection of that right in Singapore.
Amos Yee gave voice to political differences about the leadership of literally the most powerful man in our history. He criticised the way that that man’s power shaped the society we live in. If we destroy him for this reason, then we strike at the heart of democracy itself.
Jolene Tan
******************************************************************************************************************************51,000 Christians gather at Sports Hub to mark SG50; PM Lee thanks community for helping build S'pore
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong reciting the national pledge with the 51,000-strong crowd at the National Stadium at the Jubilee Day of Prayer on July 5, 2015. ST PHOTO: ALPHONSUS CHERN
SINGAPORE - A record 51,000 Christians from churches across Singapore gathered to mark SG50 and pray for the country at the Singapore Sports Hub on Sunday.
The Jubilee Day of Prayer event is the largest multi-denominational Christian event in Singapore's history, and is part of a series of events to mark its 50th year of independence.
Joining them as guest-of-honour was Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who got a warm welcome from those present as they waved national flags and cheered his arrival.
In a short speech, Mr Lee acknowledged that a jubilee year is a significant one of great celebration for Christians.He added that in the Old Testament in the Bible, a jubilee year is the 50th year at the end of seven sabbatical cycles.
"This is the spirit of the jubilee: togetherness, thankfulness and generosity that we must nurture and that will see us into the future. A future in which all our communities, including our Protestant community, will have full roles to play," said PM Lee.
He paid tribute to the Protestant community's contributions to nation building, particularly in education, where schools started by missionaries moulded young men and women of character, and in the social services, where the less privileged are served.
PM Lee also thanked the community for understanding Singapore's multi-racial and multi-religious context.
"I thank you for building trust and mutual confidence with other religious groups, between the groups as well as between the leaders, so that we can live harmoniously together and solve problems amicably and cooperatively together," he said.
"For this 50th jubilee year, let us make Singapore an enduring home, an endearing home, a home for all regardless of race, of language, of religion," he added.
The event was co-organised by the National Council of Churches in Singapore and the Evangelical Fellowship of Singapore. It was supported by the Singapore Baptist Convention, the Indian Christian Network, the Festival of Praise Fellowship, the LoveSingapore church network and the National Prayer Alliance.
No comments:
Post a Comment