Singaporean
authorities on Friday banned a gay rights forum at which a
retired Canadian law professor was to speak, the second time
in a week the city-state has forbidden an event that
touches on gay issues.
The forum was to
feature Douglas Sanders, a professor emeritus in law at
the University of British Columbia in Canada and
Thailand's Chulalongkorn University, the event's
organizer, Alex Au, told the Associated Press.
But because the
August 7 forum, titled ''Sexual Orientation in
International Law: The Case of Asia,'' was deemed contrary
to public interest, police canceled the event's
license Friday and immigration authorities rejected
Sanders's visa application, Singapore's Home Affairs
Ministry said in a statement.
''Our laws are an
expression and reflection of the values of our society;
the discourse over a domestic issue such as the laws that
govern homosexuality in Singapore must be reserved for
Singaporeans...foreigners should refrain from
interfering in the internal affairs of Singapore,''
the statement said.
But Au, the
forum's organizer, said Sanders had no such intention.
''He was going to
do a lecture in Singapore about international trends.
He is not an expert on Singapore and had no intention of
talking about Singapore,'' Au said.
Singapore's
censors earlier in the week banned an exhibition of
photographs depicting gay men and women kissing, also
organized by Au, saying the images ''promote a
homosexual lifestyle and cannot be allowed.''
The prohibitions
have come amid a debate in the city-state on whether gay
sex should be decriminalized, a topic that has prompted
opinions from prominent personalities such
as Singapore's founding leader, Lee Kuan Yew, and
British actor Sir Ian McKellen.
Lee, a former
prime minister and the architect of modern Singapore, a few
months ago questioned the city-state's ban on gay sex,
saying the government should not act as moral police
on the issue.
McKellen, an
outspoken gay rights activist since declaring his
homosexuality in the late 1980s, said in July during the
Singapore stop of a Royal Shakespeare Company tour
that he had been following the debate in Singapore and
felt sympathetic to the situation of gays in the
country.
Under Singapore
law, gay sex is deemed ''an act of gross indecency,''
punishable by a maximum of two years in jail. Authorities
have banned gay festivals and censored gay films.
Despite the official ban on gay sex, there have been
few prosecutions. (Gillian Wong, AP)
