Hi, and thank you for being here. We are Wong J-min (sometimes pseudonymised as “Jia Min”, but I’ve just made the decision today to come out publicly as a victim) and Lune Loh, two Singaporeans currently in the UK for asylum.
For the past year, we have been the victims of Singapore’s biggest criminal case, involving stalking, harassment, device-bugging, surveillance, rape, the widespread circulation of revenge porn, the minting of illicit sex videos into NFTs, and nine counts of murder. We have reported all of this to the police, but the case is so enormous and our perpetrator has been so evasive with her cybercrimes that it’s taking the police time to sort through all the evidence, which amounts to nearly 1,000 pages and counting.
Our perpetrator’s name is Mercury Jamie Alice. She is already infamous in Singapore for filing a false police report about the release of anthrax spores at a bus terminal. She got caught for this and was arraigned in court 289 days later. She has been out on bail and has continued to terrorise her victims in the meanwhile.
Since some time last year, Mercury has been supported by members of the anti-LGBTQIA+ Christian far-right in Singapore. Mercury told them that she wants to leave the “LGBTQIA+ lifestyle” but is now being falsely accused of a litany of crimes by “LGBTQIA+ militants” who wish to punish her. Needless to say, this is false. None of her victims give a fuck if she’s LGBTQIA+ or not. Some of her victims aren’t even LGBTQIA+.
UPDATE: There has been new reporting on the situation on Pink News!
UPDATE #2: A new website by some comrades in the US is now live: SafetyForSingapore.com.
Singapore takes for granted that it’s a safe country. The country has never had a criminal case so big and complicated before. Protocol and policies are designed around deterrence, which doesn’t always work when a criminal has the stamina to be malicious for months (if not years) on end. Additionally, the nature of technology keeps rapidly evolving, and Singapore has not kept up with how to deal with cybercrimes.
Mercury has been consistently relying on deliberate and persistent digital personation and identity theft over a period of 2+ years, including the reliance on burner phones (that she can easily store at safer locations other than her main registered home address) and numbers, and technological crimes to exploit the bureaucracy and protocol of Singapore’s police system and therefore evade being caught. This is why it is taking Mercury so long to be arrested; the police in Singapore actually mean well and are working hard, but are simply caught up in the deliberate complexity and confusion of the case (especially with its newer technology-related criminal methods), and lots of paperwork.
Mercury has also been consistently committing and confessing to these major crimes using her burner phones and numbers, and claiming to be her own victims on these burner accounts while simultaneously intentionally activating her victims’ major triggers and/or endangering us covertly. With her victims discredited, totally broken or physically dead, we would be unable to substantially defend ourselves and furnish evidence to counter Mercury’s narrative that we have been orchestrating everything.
This means that Mercury could potentially actually get away with all of these major crimes, because for major crimes, the standard is that it would have to be proven beyond reasonable doubt that Mercury is genuinely behind all of these offences for her to be properly convicted. In our absence or if we are totally emotionally destroyed beyond recovery, any one of us becomes a believable scapegoat, as Mercury has planned.
Mercury is essentially playing “go big, or go home” because she is banking on the success of one of us being scapegoated. Mercury has been effective at using institutional protocol against each and every one of us. It’s genuinely been crazy and horrible.
“I was studying full-time for a diploma and working part-time in the food/service industry back in Singapore before all of this began. I had first met Mercury through OkCupid in 2020. We hooked up once in August. Unknown to me at that point of time, Mercury actually knew who I was prior, because I had been in the news for a climate protest (criticising ExxonMobil and the fossil fuel industry in general) that I did under Fridays for Future in Singapore. I was somewhat known as an activist because protests are illegal in Singapore, so this was considered a high-risk action. Mercury thought I would come in useful and has since admitted that during that encounter, she drugged me with GHB to “loosen” me up (without my knowledge or consent), took videos of me while I was in an altered state, raped me while I was unconscious, and installed spyware into my phone as she had seen me type in my password.
Mercury did not disturb me much for over a year, until June 2022, when she noticed that I was supporting #Justice4Harvey – a human rights cause about an autistic transgender Tamil woman who has not seen justice for her rape in 2014. Harvey was raped in Singapore’s main and only mental healthcare institution. It’s been almost 10 years and she has seen zero justice for it. On top of that, she’s been hounded by the Singapore government and misrepresented by local media, which is regulated by the Singapore government. Mercury hates Harvey and in fact tried to frame Harvey for her own anthrax hoax, resulting in Harvey getting interrogated by the police and her home raided. But eventually Harvey got cleared because she literally did not participate in the anthrax hoax, and was just being thrown under the bus by Mercury.
In June 2022, when Mercury noticed that I was supporting #Justice4Harvey, she grew incredibly jealous and sexually possessive. This was when she revealed that she had sex videos of me and started threatening to leak it to my family, friends, school and country-wide. One month later, in July 2022, this came true. Mercury started gaining access to various group chats, sent my sex videos and doxxed my full name and address. Police estimate that the videos have reached 100,000 to 200,000 people. They are still in the midst of tallying the numbers.
In April 2023, my grandfather passed away. After the first day of the funeral, Mercury admitted to having been involved in the murder of my grandfather via poison. This was aided and abetted by the Christian far-right. The suspected murder was reported to the police so that an autopsy could be done in time – yet despite multiple phone calls and urges for promptness, the police only got back to us after the body had already been cremated. This is not standard procedure at all, and we know this because we’ve previously had bodies autopsied over the course of our case. Members of the Christian far-right in Singapore (some of whom occupy high authority positions in political and legal spaces) had helped to cover up the murder and block the autopsy from going through.
Because of this, I figured that I was probably next in line for murder. Therefore, I fled to the UK for asylum – leaving my entire life and loved ones behind. I was born and raised in Singapore for 21 years so the decision was brutal but necessary because I need to be safe. It’s the opposite of ideal but I have no choice. I have been forced into this corner.
As it turns out, the Christian far-right, in collaboration with Mercury, did not actually intend to murder me… but intended to frame me for my own grandfather’s death. They wanted to extract false testimony out of my friends. This means that had I not fled Singapore, I could right now be in jail for 20 years or life, or even face the death penalty. That’s insane. In no world is this remotely okay.”
“I am a trans woman and also a trans rights activist from Singapore. I came to London to pursue my Masters but now I cannot return to Singapore because I have gotten wind of Christian far-right plans to have me institutionalised and raped in a male ward. I have been watched and resented by the Christian far-right for years.
In August 2020, the Christian far-right infiltrated my college’s LGBTQIA+ student community group, “tFreedom”, and discovered that we were hosting an event about kink/bondage safety, consent and education, known as “Let’s Talk About Sex”. They deliberately took the event out of context to create a moral spectacle and panic within the Singaporean public sphere. They mobilized overnight, creating a petition called “Stop Promoting Violent Sex at NUS”, which garnered over 11,000 signatures extremely quickly. Because of this, tFreedom was made to cancel the event and our activities were on hold for months. Since then, universities across Singapore have been stricter with their funding and support of LGBTQIA+ student community groups. They have more stringent regulations now. We can all feel the stark difference.
In January 2021, I participated in #FixSchoolsNotStudents, in protest against trans discrimination happening in schools in Singapore. I was arrested for this and went through police investigations. The protest actually successfully created repercussions on a policy level as schools had to revise their transphobic policies. But the consequence has been that I’ve been on the Christian far-right’s radar ever since.”
Globally, Christian far-right groups have spent over US $280 million to fight against LGBTQIA+ rights, abortion rights, and so on. This includes $50 million across Europe and another $50 million across Africa over the past decade.
The Christian far-right in Singapore has been explicit and upfront about seeing Singapore as a vital country in their mission to spread Christianity in Asia. They refer to Singapore as the “Antioch of Antiochs”:
“An Antioch city or nation is set up by God – predestined by Him – to impact other nations. It’s set up for His Kingdom purposes. I believe it is the destiny of one such city to affect other cities’ destinies. One nation impacting other nations.
Singapore’s Antioch churches must go forth, like the church of Antioch, to impact other people groups. The Antioch of Acts 13 affected its entire region.
I believe inherent in the understanding of the Antioch church of Acts 13, is that for Singapore to be an Antioch nation, the whole church must come together, decide their own individual mission callings, and also be united in the purpose of impacting another nation.”
In 2009, there was already an attempted Christian far-right takeover of Singapore’s main feminist organisation as well, in the name of being “pro-family”, as they were angry that the organisation was trying to roll out more progressive and actually informative sex education programmes. This is known as the “Aware Saga”. One of the main churches involved in this was the Church Of Our Saviour, which is also connected to the current Mercury situation. There is continuity in the links and historical basis to all of what’s happening currently.
The Christian far-right wants to criminalise being transgender in Singapore, such that anyone who is suspected of being transgender can be institutionalised until they “cease” to be transgender. At the same time, “repeat offenders” can be sentenced to preventive detention. This is known as “Operation High Tide”. As it stands, there are already Christian far-right churches in Singapore that currently do conversion therapy for “same sex attraction”.
One of our friends, who is also a main victim of Mercury and the Christian far-right, has exposed some details of Operation High Tide in her publicly released letter to the President of Singapore. Carissa has gone on the public record to list out the groups and churches that she’s aware are involved. There is 0 benefit for her to do so, and only immense political, personal, financial and legal cost. This puts her directly under the radar of the Christian far-right, as an LGBTQIA+ person explicitly exposing their plans. Nonetheless, Carissa is willing to take this huge risk and put her body on the frontline because there is no alternative; the Christian far-right wants LGBTQIA+ folks gone, and they have been actively working on this for years.
As mentioned, Mercury is getting support from Christian far-right individuals from notable organisations and churches under the narrative of conversion therapy. Mercury’s claim is that her victims (i.e. including J-min and Lune) are supposedly so deep into the LGBTQIA+ “ideology” that we are angry at her for wanting to leave the LGBTQIA+ “lifestyle” and are thus trying to “cancel” her. Once again, this is false. We do not care. Nonetheless, given the wave of anti-trans legislation in the US as well as the recent homophobic law passed in Uganda, the Christian far-right groups have been happy to take on Mercury’s narrative and/or use her as a symbol for their anti-LGBTQIA+ agenda. This collaboration is a win-win for them both.
The Christian far-right in Singapore has an interest in preserving Mercury, and because preserving Mercury is directly tied to ensuring her victims are discredited, silenced or literally dead, they are willing to resort to violent, illicit and dishonest methods too. This is why we are not safe and have had to flee to the UK for asylum.
As a note, Singapore is a tiny country. We’re a city built on an island, with a population size of under 6 million. It takes maximally an hour and a half to get from one end of the country to the other by public transport. This means that Singapore is highly governable, and any policy/legislation change will have tangible effects manifesting in less than 5 years. Because Singapore is physically well-located, a finance hub and a trading port, and is uniquely governable with a high population density (meaning that any policy changes can be felt within just 5 years), should Singapore indeed successfully become a Christian far-right stronghold, the Christian far-right will have more resources and ability to continue their already-existing operations in countries such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Australia, and so on. This means that being LGBTQIA+ could swiftly be criminalised in multiple countries worldwide. If the Christian far-right does manage to take over Singapore (which is designed to be secular), even the UK or more supposedly trans-friendly places like Australia and New Zealand may no longer be necessarily safe either. The current situation unfolding in Singapore is at active risk of being co-opted through disinformation. Local and global far-right/fundamentalist Christian actors have a vested interest in weaponising this case to advance their anti-LGBTQIA+ “culture war” worldwide. We agree with Lemkin Institute’s observation that the trans community is facing a genocide as we are feeling its effects here in Singapore too. It is not new, but it is being ramped up worldwide.
If this happens, and Singapore becomes a success story for the far-right, how will LGBTQIA+ be safe across the world?
Further readings:
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