Hard Launching My Refugee Sob Story
I'm J-min, and on 16 June I came out as a victim of Mercury Jamie Alice and Christian far-right fascism in Singapore. This is the beginning of my story.
Two weeks ago, on 16 June 2023, I was part of a protest outside the Singapore High Commission in London, together with fellow victim Lune. I also officially came out on my Instagram as a victim of Mercury, and made it public that I had fled Singapore to seek asylum due to persecution by the Christian far-right.
I’m trying to picture myself just three months ago in March 2023, when I flew to Sydney to meet a beloved friend of mine and go surfing and exploring the Blue Mountains. I was there for a week, hit the waves and figured out how to stand up, walked from Circular Quay down through the city towards Central, and spent time laying on the grass in various parks. A day after I flew back to Singapore, I would start my internship at a news company, my final semester of credits that would guarantee me a diploma from my polytechnic.
While I was frolicking (or something to that extent) at the Royal Botanic Gardens, I received a call from my friend Alex* in Singapore. “Have you turned on your laptop in the past few days?” they asked me.
While the waves lapped quietly on the waterfront and the ibises roamed around the gardens, I found out that my laptop had been bugged, and my iCloud accessed. This resulted in photos of several acquaintances used in burner Telegram accounts that were then used to harass several of my friends back home. It had been a question of “where the hell did Mercury get access to these photos?” for ages, until my friend Joyce pinpointed it to my laptop.
The next hour, as I stalked back to my friend’s apartment in a fury, I received text message after text message from friends — arranging handing over my laptop for forensics at the airport when I touched down in Singapore, trying to ask around for a spare laptop, etc. I was livid; my internship started immediately after I came back, and I was now laptop-less and my entire camera roll was accessed by my stalker and rapist.
This anecdote summarises my life the past year living as a victim of Mercury Jamie Alice; even the most peaceful of days are permeated with genuine brain rot and psychic damage. Some might call it “triggers” — and I know my friends would, because after I found out my laptop was bugged, I refused to hear any more about it, and threatened to drown myself after snorkeling if I had to find out any more.
These memories, some hilarious and some that I’ve subconsciously buried, are my testimony to what have happened to me in the past year. Sometimes, it can be too much to even cohesively narrate out chronologically. Luckily, I do have evidence of the material timeline (scrolling back on massive group chats) and material facts so that I can have an objective reference of what happened and when.
But what happens after a distressing event happens? I continue on with my daily life. I attended two months of my internship, and I submitted myself to the pace of that career. In the middle of April, my grandfather passes away. I get a day off for the funeral; in the meantime we stood around his deathbed in gentle silence. He had been deathly ill and in daily pain for a few years, and he had become bedridden, his body filled with bedsores that doctors could only gape at. We did not mourn, because he had gone in his sleep after almost five years of pain.
I went to office the day I found out that Mercury claimed to have murdered him. I sat down at my hotdesk; I don’t remember exactly what I was working on. Sometimes I look back and I think that it is absolutely insane that I still had to go on like nothing was happening.
I can only put the broken pieces of what I have compartmentalised together because otherwise I will never be able to get my own story straight. I never told my parents, nor anyone else that he was murdered; I feared what would happen if his body was taken at the wake in front of fifty relatives by the police.
Mercury had said, Sweet 9th kill, I wonder who’s the tenth? The police who was meant to be handling the autopsy case was totally uncontactable until after the cremation had already been done, despite my friend Carissa repeatedly calling and texting. How are you meant to autopsy an already-cremated body? So I fled.
A poison ivy rash
Running away didn’t mean that there were no emergencies and last minute running around. When Harvey was called to the police station on 3 May I went down to offer my support; we trooped back after her interrogation and receipt of the charge sheet and tried our best to consoleher.
It was unconceivable that she was going to be charged in two days’ time; everything happened far too quickly. My friend Carissa reported that the residents in Harvey’s address noticed the green dot of a sniper laser rangefinder pointing into the flat and at Harvey’s chest, and six investigation officers were dispatched down to deal with Harvey.
All this for an Instagram story? I don’t doubt that there could have been a case of harassment against the President, because Harvey expresses herself precisely the way she does. But sniper rifles, a whole fleet dispatched to her address, and a two day arraignment was completely bewildering. Mind you, Mercury’s own offenses – which if we tried to list in entirety we would be here until space time collapsed on itself – have been under investigation for so long, and her victims (including me) left unprotected and vulnerable to further harassment and abuse.
Instead, Harvey was charged on 5 May for Section 5(2) of the Protection from Harassment Act in five days. Her bail was revoked. She stayed for a week in the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) in remand over an Instagram story, which resulted in an ultimately minor charge. Compare this with Mercury's much more serious anthrax hoax charge and the fact that Mercury stated in her own police report that she committed the anthrax hoax under the influence of her Dissociative identity disorder (DID)... In spite of this, Mercury was not remanded to IMH and her bail was not revoked. Any layperson can see the total inconsistency.
Why was Harvey arraigned and remanded so quickly? The answer fell into our laps with one Mercury Jamie Alice, who by this point had made yet another burner account, this time to gloat to us that she had finally prevailed and defeated Harvey.
"The primary purpose of Operation Poison Ivy,” she said in her messages, “is to get Miss Vickreman charged and her bail revoked, so that she'll want to save her own skin and be willing to sell out anybody to get out on bail again. Hence, she will be willing to cooperate when the time comes with giving a statement and testimony to fill in the gaps and make the AGC's case against J-Min watertight.”
Operation Poison Ivy, then, was crucial to nail me as part of Operation Mandrake, Mercury said. The murder of my grandfather and its subsequent cover-up, it seemed, was not just to victimise me further, but to build a case that I was the one who murdered him, and tied together with testimony obtained from Harvey in Poison Ivy.
All of these were reported independently by the exposé site Victims of Malice, but the above that I have quoted from the text messages are things that I have seen with my own two eyes. I believe fully that Harvey being sent to IMH under these circumstances was for Operation Poison Ivy. Call it a conspiracy if you want. But then what's your alternate explanation for "Mercury = anthrax hoax = 289 days charge + no IMH remand v.s. Harvey = minor charge = 5 days charge + remand to IMH"?
The Fragments, put together
Part of my entire experience of this is just an entire string of terrible experiences happening one after another, interspersed between semesters of school. Imagine a Minecraft player being dealt countless damage in a row, except I’m barely regenerating enough that I don’t actually crumple and die.
It’s not just about the trauma, and pulling together my recollections so I can get a better grasp of all the absurdities. I do believe that this will have potential impacts on the region’s geopolitics and historical turmoil; the Christian far-right and the fact that I have to flee are things that many people have to reckon with. The fact that I (and so many more people) have experienced so much, and yet are unprotected and/or still at risk, is alarming and worth reflecting upon. People with names but no voices are still stuck in Singapore, wrapped up in this absurd drama that will change their lives forever.
I understand that not much have been said publicly, except for that gossip site (you know the one), and I strive to be able to tell our stories in the meantime with the safety of being 10,000 kilometres away. Lune and I are the first to publicly state what have happened to us, and I am sure that there will be more that will bubble to the surface. We just have to wait until the rippling ceases.
*: not their real name