Global Headlines Express | Trump Invites Putin to the US Again; The Economist on Singapore's Much-Suppressed Gay Pride Event
Global Headlines is QDaily's new column for 2018, dedicated to helping you know more.
Global Headlines is QDaily's new column for 2018, dedicated to helping you know more.
What the Agenda-Setters Are Talking About
The Economist: Singapore's gay pride event "Pink Dot" enters its tenth year.
Singaporean photographer Leslie Kee is showing his latest series, “Out In Singapore”, at an art-house cinema — 150 photographs in all. Every person in them belongs to Singapore's LGBT community.
In 2009, former Indonesian president Baharuddin Jusuf Habibie dismissed Singapore as nothing more than a "Little Red Dot" on the map, small enough to rub out with a little finger. That May, local gay rights groups turned the phrase into "Pink Dot" and held a rally for gay rights at Singapore's Hong Lim Park, asking people to wear pink and show up. That was the first Pink Dot, and nearly 2,500 people came.
From that day on, Pink Dot became Singapore's annual gay rights event. The biggest was in 2015, which drew 25,000 people.
The government has kept it on a tight leash throughout. Two years ago it barred foreigners from attending, which forced the organizers to add barricades and hire more security staff. It also banned sponsorship by foreign-owned companies; Google and Barclays, both heavy sponsors in past years, pulled out this year.
None of this has cooled the community's enthusiasm. This year the organizers stretched what used to be a single day into a festival lasting several days, adding short talks, a film program, and a photo exhibition around the main event.
"Ten years ago, getting people to come out was far harder than it is now," an organizer told The Economist.
Seah and Laurindo Garcia are one of the male couples in "Out In Singapore." They plan to marry in Australia this year, though Singapore will not recognize the marriage: same-sex marriage remains illegal there.
Singapore still keeps Section 377A of the Penal Code, an anti-gay statute left over from British colonial rule. It makes sex between men a crime, oral or anal, and offenders can face up to two years in prison.
The government no longer punishes anyone under Section 377A, but the law's survival is itself discriminatory, and local human rights groups have attacked it and demanded its repeal.
According to the BBC, in 2014 a male couple and a gay man separately petitioned the courts to declare Section 377A unconstitutional. The court dismissed their appeals, saying that whether to keep or scrap the law was for parliament to decide.
Beyond the law, Singapore imposes plenty of other restrictions and discriminatory practices on LGBT people: LGBT groups cannot register as formal organizations, an "unwritten" rule keeps gay people from adopting children, and conversion therapy is legal.
The government is in a tight spot of its own — rising demands for equal rights on one side, local Christian and Muslim anti-gay forces on the other. In a 2017 interview, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said of Section 377A that the country would "have to wait until society reaches a consensus," which captures the government's ambiguity.
Drag queen Becca D'Bus says that for all the pressure, local LGBT culture is still full of life. But she notes that many young drag queens still dare not tell their families what they do for a living. Her advice to them is blunt: "If it's not safe [to say], don't."
Singapore's location and its hunger for foreign money may gradually shift that position, since how it treats LGBT people affects how attractive it looks to foreign investors. This year, for instance, Singaporean food company Old Chang Kee publicly backed London's Pride festival, and the old jewelry house Poh Heng Jewellery won public goodwill by putting a same-sex couple in its advertising.
The tenth Pink Dot takes place this Saturday (July 21), with several thousand people expected.
24-Hour News Makers
At the "Trump-Putin summit" in Helsinki on July 16, a reporter asked Trump about Russian interference in the US election. Trump answered: "President Putin says it's not Russia. I don't see any reason why it would be."
The remark drew heavy fire once Trump got home; former CIA director John O. Brennan went as far as to call him a "traitor."
"Traitor" and "treason" became American political catchwords overnight, and, unexpectedly, something Republicans and Democrats could agree on, as the criticism kept coming. Trump later said he had misspoken, which did not put out the fire.
He does not appear to have been badly hurt by any of it, and he certainly has not given up on getting closer to Russia.
Around noon North American time on the 19th, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders posted on Twitter: "President Trump has asked national security adviser John Bolton to invite President Putin to Washington this fall, and those discussions are already underway."
Earlier, Trump had tweeted: "The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media. I look forward to our second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed, including stopping terrorism, security for Israel, nuclear......(Trump never finished the sentence, leaving it hanging)"
As critics questioned how close he and Putin had become, Trump told CNBC on Thursday (the 19th) — in remarks reported by CNN — again and again that he has been tougher on Russia than any other US president. If diplomatic relations between the two countries were to collapse, he said, he would be Putin's "worst enemy."
Putin also had his say about the uproar: forces in the US, he said, want to sacrifice the summit's results and the US-Russia relationship to feed their own political ambitions — ambitions that would cost tens of thousands of American jobs and damage American business and security.
What Else Happened in the World
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has blacklisted Australian nun Patricia Fox and ordered her deported. Fox, 71, has lived in the Philippines for 27 years and has long worked on local human rights issues, which is why Duterte called her an unwelcome "alien." This is the second time he has ordered her out. Fox says she does not want to leave.
Seven major South Korean talent agencies have jointly set up a music services company, MCPA. It will handle the distribution and management of K-pop music videos on video platforms worldwide. The seven agencies are SM, YG, JYP, Big Hit, MYSTIC, FNC, and Star Empire.
Israel's parliament passed the "Jewish Nation-State Law," declaring that the Jewish people have the right to national self-determination. The law states that "Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people, who may exercise the right of self-determination there." It also says the government should establish Jewish-only communities, and it removes Arabic's status as an "official language."
141 sexual abuse survivors in the US received the ESPYs' courage award. The 141 women, abused by former US gymnastics team doctor Lawrence G. Nassar, appeared at the 2018 ESPY Awards on the evening of the 18th to accept the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. In January this year, Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison for repeated sex crimes.
Turkey has ended its state of emergency. The Turkish government declared the emergency after the attempted military coup of July 20, 2016. After seven extensions, newly inaugurated President Erdoğan announced this month that the two-year state of emergency has been formally lifted.
Someone Said
"The United States is one of the most advanced countries in the world, and yet it has 400,000 modern slaves living under conditions of forced labor."
— Andrew Forrest, founder of the Walk Free Foundation
As quoted by The Guardian, figures released on July 19 by the international human rights organization Walk Free Foundation in its 2018 Global Slavery Index show that North Korea and Eritrea have the highest share of modern slavery victims in their populations. In North Korea, victims account for 10 percent of the population — 2.6 million people. Modern slavery covers human trafficking, forced labor, and forced or servile marriage.
Walk Free Foundation founder Andrew Forrest said: "The United States is one of the most advanced countries in the world, and yet it has 400,000 modern slaves living under conditions of forced labor. That is a shocking statistic, and it shows how big this problem is worldwide."
Things You Might Also Be Interested In
From this August, uploading blueprints for 3D-printed handguns will be legal in the United States.
In 2013, Cody Wilson, then a student at the University of Texas School of Law (UT Law), set about teaching himself to use a 3D printer. He wanted to design a gun people could print, and to build a platform where they could download it.
Influenced by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Wilson built an open-source platform, Defcad.com, and said: "We want to be the Wikipedia of guns." Defcad.com became a place to share gun files.
He put the design blueprint for a handgun he had made, "The Liberator," online for anyone to download. Within days it had been downloaded more than 100,000 times, and the FBI began watching him.
A week later Wilson received a warning from the US State Department: take the 3D gun blueprints down at once or face prosecution for breaching federal arms export controls. Wilson argued that stopping him from uploading gun blueprints violated the First Amendment — free speech. In 2015 he sued the US government.
Wilson won. The US courts ruled that from this August, uploading blueprints for 3D-printed handguns is legal.
On This Day
July 20, 1969: The US Apollo 11 lunar module landed in the Sea of Tranquility, and astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the Moon.
July 20, 1982: China successfully bred a giant panda by artificial insemination using frozen semen.
July 20, 1987: Iran-Iraq War — the UN Security Council passed Resolution 598 on a ceasefire between Iran and Iraq, demanding an immediate halt to the fighting.
July 20, 2005: Canada became the fourth country in the world to recognize same-sex marriage.
July 20, 2017: Chester Bennington, lead singer of the American band Linkin Park, killed himself at the age of 41.
On This Day, Tomorrow and the Day After
July 21, 776 BCE: The world's first Olympic Games was held in ancient Greece.
July 21, 1917: Russian February Revolution — Alexander Kerensky became prime minister and formed a government.
July 21, 2007: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the last novel in the Harry Potter series, went on sale worldwide on the same day.
July 22, 1966: Liu Shaoqi, chairman of the People's Republic of China, issued a statement on behalf of the Chinese government saying China was prepared to make the greatest national sacrifices to help the Vietnamese people defeat the United States.
July 22, 1999: Microsoft released the first version of its instant messaging software, MSN Messenger.
Cover image: the 2014 Pink Dot event, from Jnzl's Photos @flickr (CC BY 2.0)
Translated from the original QDaily article. Original publication date retained.