FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(content warnings: graphic detailing of rape, assault, sexual violence, and incarceration)
Today, on 31st March 2024, I stood outside both the AGC and near the State Courts, for trans women in Singapore are still being remanded and incarcerated in male prisons. I do not wish to be silent any further on the kind of conditions we as trans women face in male prisons. Many trans women in Singapore who face incarceration, or who are incarcerated, are pre-operative (largely due to being unable to afford it) or non-operative, and are thus not legally considered female by State authorities. Therefore, they still end up in male prisons with cis-male inmates and guards. Regardless of whether trans women are remanded or sentenced to prison, they are forced to be in male prisons. I know because my friend Harvey was held in a male remand cell in police custody in 2013, and was additionally placed in an IMH forensic ward with cis-male patients in 2013, 2014 and 2023. I know because another femme-presenting intersex senior of mine from my High School has been in a forensic ward in IMH with cis-male patients. I know because Harvey has told me about what her other trans women friends have gone through in prison. None of those friends of hers are alive today after what they went through.
What do trans women face in a male prison? Trauma and suffering that will break them completely, which is entirely different from what a cis-man in remand or incarceration will experience. If Harvey is remanded to prison, like trans women before her, she would be placed in a male housing unit, be trapped with 3 to 7 men in a cell, and be treated as a man by the inmates and guards, not as the woman she is. Even if she were placed in a cell with other trans women, male inmates would be added to fill the capacity of the cell, she would still be subjected to male authority figures for strip-searches, and she would have to interact with cis-male inmates during the course of her incarceration. She would have to endure mandatory and forced strip-searches in groups of 5 to 10 men – in both her initial admission to prison, and subsequently each time that she is moved between security areas and is out of her cell. She would be forced to have skin-to-skin contact with the male guards, and stripped completely from neck down. She would be forced to undress, shower, defecate in front of her male cellmates every day, which would be extremely humiliating for her. This means that as a woman, her body would be forcibly exposed, with private areas of her body being invaded by male guards against her consent. Many trans women who have gone through prison would have their hair shortened upon conviction, and have to endure a long-term change in appearance, i.e. continue looking male for years even after release since hair takes that long to grow back to their female length, which is psychologically torturous.
On 5th May 2023, in one such instance of strip-searching that occurred when her bail was revoked and she was taken into custody, multiple male security officers tore off her underwear and tights, so that they could force apart her buttocks in order to shine a flashlight into it, while painfully squeezing her breasts to check for contraband in her skin folds. Precisely because she was resisting them, she felt the officers' fingers press down harder on her buttocks until their fingers penetrated her anus. This is nothing short of rape. Upon being dragged out of her holding cell in the State Courts Tower (which is still a male custodial environment), she had to endure beatings to every part of her body, to the point where her body went into shock, and she involuntarily urinated and ejaculated in front of the security officers who were harming her, with the officers callously remarking that she had no shame.
Due to the above, Harvey has told me that she feels the needs to suppress relieving herself, to abstain from eating or drinking entirely, if she were to be incarcerated during her pre-trial remand, just to avoid any humiliation due to urination or defecation, even if this might lead to her being lawfully force-fed. This would cause her adverse bodily complications with lasting consequences to both her physical and psychological health. Should she be strip-searched again, Harvey would understandably be likely to resist that violation, but that would be taken by the male guards as further authorization to expend force on her, creating the conditions for the Prosecution to potentially stack her with more charges, which could attract judicial caning, for attempting to hurt public servants – simply for resisting against her gender and sexual dignity being infringed upon. All this is despite her existing past traumas from being violated by men and male security figures, including a rape by a male patient in IMH in 2014 when she was placed in a male ward to assess her fitness to plead a charge. All this would psychologically break her.
There is no way I could sleep soundly at night knowing these details. There can be no way to live normally if this continues. Trans women are known to face abuse from men. Many of us are traumatized by men and male authority figures. Trans women being incarcerated and placed into male prisons with male guards is nothing short of torturous, and violating our dignities as women. It is no wonder many of us do not survive remand or incarceration. I stand here knowing that I might face incarceration myself for this, and knowing fully that I can perish from the deadly conditions trans women in prison faced before me. I have long decided to myself that, for the safety and peace of trans, non-binary, and queer communities in Singapore, I am willing to stake my finances, my future, and my body. This is but a small price to pay, considering how the violence and pain endured by incarcerated trans women have been wiped off the face of this country, and the rest of the world. Solidarity with trans women who had to endure male custody and prison: with Vickreman Harvey Chettiar, with Sarah Jane Baker, with Ashley Diamond (who was raped in a male prison 14 times), with the late Vikki Louise Angie Jade Thompson and the late Marjorie Harwood (both who died while in male prison), and countless others in Singapore and the World. Trans women should not be in male remand or prisons.
#NoToMaleRemand #Safety4Harvey #ProtectTransInmates
Lune Loh