During the 1990s in Singapore, LGBT activism was an underground activity. The community had to hold its monthly meetings in secret for fear of members being outed and the government clamping down on them. This was an era when the police raided bars and clubs which hosted LGBT gatherings and the officers posed as gay men cruising for sex in order to entrap and later charge gay men in court for obscene behavior.
The fear of a crackdown was so great that Eileena Lee, an activist who started RedQuEEN! in 1998, told The News Lens, "Back then, in order to avoid police raids, the monthly queer women nights out would be held at different venues every month."
The political leadership was intractable and refused to grant even basic rights to the community. In 2000, People Like Us (PLU), a gay rights organization, made an application to organize a public forum and was refused on the grounds that Singapore society was too “conservative.”
