Friday, November 9, 2007

NMP Thio Li-Ann earned extra bit of sympathy for second threatening letter

Really, no one likes to be threatened. NMP Thio Li Ann was first threatened to be ‘pissed on her grave’ by Mr Alfian Sa’at. A second threatening letter was sent to her but this time it was from an anonymous writer. The second threatening letter had stated that ‘we know where you work, we’ll send people there to hunt you down’.

She is now like a dart board. Ever since her strongly-worded Parliamentary speech on the repeal of 377A which was peppered with words of discrimination from her religious point of view, she has received numerous criticisms from all over Singapore including myself. But to threaten Ms Thio and her family with bodily harm is completely against the “spirit of civil discourse and democracy’, as quoted from Mr Alex Au from yawningbread.org. I do personally condemn such actions as being uncivilised.

Was the threatening letter from the members of the pro-repeal group? I certainly hope not, for it would further discredit their stand on this whole issue to fight for the repeal of 377A and they would have gone overboard to resort to criminal intimidation.

Could it be from members of the 377A anti-repeal camp or perhaps someone from neither? Well, it would be unscrupulous for anyone to try to sow discord between the pro-repeal and anti-repeal camp as it would just create more ‘ammo’ for the anti-repeal camp to say “See, I told you, they don’t deserve the repeal. They are such immoral and dangerous people to our society to threaten a member of the parliament who speaks for the majority of us”.

In any case, while I am becoming more sympathetic towards Ms Thio's plight, I wish she would re-think her religiously-inclined stand on the 377A issue by making gay friends if she had not, to understand about their lifestyle and stand on morality. Being a victim of threats will not make her flawed arguments about homosexuality any less flawed. See my previous article on NMP Thio Li-Ann.

I wish her safe and sound.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi James,
I agree with you to a large extent. As much as I too sympathise with Ms. Thio,religion should not be a factor to base one's arguments on. It is not viewed as fair in my opinion. But rather biased.
And like you mentioned, one should learn to understand the lives of the gays. As by doing so, will one give them the respect they deserve, even though they're a minority group. As I believe all of us as humans in general would like to be treated with respect thus we should treat others the same way as well.

Anonymous said...

After hearing the learned professor on the 377A, I completely lost respect for her.

A person without apathy for a human being being different from her religious beliefs ought not to be representing the people.

Should she be in a group GRP, I would not vote for her however strong the group credential is.

James Chia said...

Hi vanclair, we share the same view that everyone must be treated equally regardless of race and sexuality.

Anonymous, thank goodness she's a NMP. I won't vote for her either if she were to contest in my ward.

Anonymous said...

Yes, we sure do. =)