In his affidavit, Vui Kong’s lawyer, M Ravi, states that in acting in this manner, the Attorney-General has violated Vui Kong’s fundamental right to equal protection of the law enshrined in Article 12(1) of the Constitution. Applying the standards set out by the Court in the recent case of Ramalingam Ravinthran vs PP, it is submitted by Mr Ravi, that ‘the Applicant is able to raise a prima facie case of a breach of Article 12(1).’

Chia has been identified by the Attorney-General’s chambers as the alleged mastermind behind the criminal enterprise that Yong was found to have been a part of. In reply to queries made by M Ravi, the Deputy Public Prosecutor confirmed that Chia had been arrested in connection with the trafficking syndicate that Vui Kong was a part of. Yong had also mentioned his name repeatedly to the police and to the court while accounting for his actions.

During the criminal trial in the High Court, it was found that Chia was the person who initially contacted Vui Kong, and subsequently provided him with the ‘gifts’ to deliver. The ‘gifts’ that Vui Kong was caught with was found to have contained the 47.27g of diamorphine, which he was sentenced to death for.

Chia however, remains uncharged and in executive detention under the Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Act, where he can be release at any time. The Prosecution had informed the court that they had withdrawn charges against Chia due to a lack of evidence. However, Vui Kong, in his affidavit, states that, ‘ I do not recall having been asked by the Prosecutor to assist in relation to any difficulty of evidence perceived in relation to Chia.’

Such is the phenomenon created by the Mandatory Death Penalty, that despite being caught at about the same time as Vui Kong, in relation to the same criminal enterprise, third parties and parcel in question, the mastermind behind the criminal syndicate remains in detention while the courier that he recruited, who is young, naïve and in desperate need of money, is sentenced to death. This cries out for explanation as it goes against the very notion of justice.

Vui Kong, in his affidavit, writes that, ‘My complaint is that if the Attorney-General felt unable to prosecute Chia in the circumstances, he should have felt unable to prosecute me and my prosecution (for a capital offence) on those same facts can only be described as a treatment which is not equal within the meaning of Article 12(1).’ He further states that, ‘I do not understand how it can be possible for the Attorney-General to prosecute me in such circumstances given that on all the evidence before him, he is unable to prosecute Mr Chia the mastermind.’

According to M Ravi, ‘The evidence on record is sufficient to rebut the presumption of constitutionality with regards to the A-G’s decision to prosecute the Applicant for a capital offence while not prosecuting a more culpable party at all’. One such reason is ‘ the lack of any apparent reason for the Attorney-General’s decision other than a difficulty of evidence which is itself difficult to follow given the evidence against Chia’. Another reason would be that, ‘it is contrary to any notion of justice that (all other things being equal) a less culpable offender should be charged with a more serious offence (and subjected to a more serious punishment) while a more culpable offender is not prosecuted at all when both are involved in the same criminal enterprise, especially when the punishment of a less culpable offender is death.

In addition, Ravi also points to the fact that the courts intervention, ‘would serve an additional purpose in this case by reminding the Attorney-General of the legislative priority intended to be given as between categories of offenders under the Act.’

He cites the speech made by the then Law Minister, Mr Chua Sian Chin, who said that, ‘The death penalty will also be imposed for the unauthorized import, export or trafficking of more than 30g of morphine or more than 15g of heroin…It is not intended to sentence petty morphine and heroin peddlers to death’. Ravi adds that the purposes of the Act, ‘is to target the masterminds behind the drug trafficking enterprises, not the low-level ‘pedlars’ recruited, forced or misled to traffic the drugs.’

The Court has yet to set a date for the hearing. We will keep you updated in due course.

-Damien Chng

Such news doesn’t come very often. We’re still waiting to hear about Cheong Chun Yin and Yong Vui Kong’s clemency appeals. But Atiqah’s case gives us all cause for celebration, and hope for the future.

Our thoughts go out to her family and friends who have been so brave and so strong in mobilising to campaign for her life. We would also like to say a big thank you to the lawyers (in Singapore and in Malaysia) who have worked hard to fight her case, and anti-death penalty activists who have spoken out for her.

A little girl will not become an orphan. Atiqah will be able to come home.

Your story has touched us all and we have you in our thoughts. We are all gathered here today to celebrate your birthday. But we are also here to remember your life and what you have done, the good and the bad.

Vui Kong, no one here denies that you have made a mistake in life. It is a mistake that is grave, and it has probably affected the lives of others in ways that we cannot imagine.

But we simply cannot accept that the punishment you deserve is death.

Many who do not understand our cause will think that we are advocating for your release. That cannot be any more untrue. The second chance that we want your to have is a second chance at making things right. What can be better if you can help us prevent many others from stepping down the same path as you did. What better way to solve the drug problem than to educate, and to make people aware. This you have promised to do. And we want to help you fulfil that promise.

To those who think that executing you, and the many others on death row, would help solve the drug problem, we can only hope that they can place themselves in your position, and realise the difficulties you faced which eventually led you to make that horrible mistake. If they could only know you and your story, maybe they will change their minds , maybe they will think again.

Its is a difficult road to go through, but we are all behind you.

We also want you to know that your love for your mother has touched us all. Vui Kong, do not worry, we have her in our thoughts as well.

Happy birthday Vui Kong.

The case of Ramalingam Ravinthran v Attorney-General (A-G) drew to a close at the Court of Appeal on 10 January 2012, with Chief Justice (CJ) Chan Sek Keong dismissing the motion put forth by the defendant’s lawyer Mr M. Ravi.

The reopening  of this case during the clemency period and after all appeals had been exhausted by Ravinthran’s previous defence team, is unprecedented in Singapore’s judicial history (in the case of Yong Vui Kong, his right to appeal was not exhausted, but rather reinstated as Yong had initially withdrawn his appeal).

The accused, Ravinthran, and his co-accused, one Sundar Arujunan, had been arrested on 13 July 2006 for being in possession of significant quantities of cannabis and cannabis mixture.

Despite that both defendants were in possession of the same bag containing the drugs, they were charged differently. While Ravinthran was charged with possession of a quantity of controlled drugs that met the threshold which would carry the death penalty, Arujunan had the quantities he was charged for reduced  to reflect a non-capital offence.

Mr Ravi had submitted a Motion on 9 September 2011 arguing that the prosecution, in prejudicing his client in selecting the charge, had used its discretion in a manner that breached Article 12 of the Constitution – that which pertains to a person’s right to equal protection of the law.

In the 10 January statement, Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong stated that “… in the context of the prosecutorial power, the Prosecution is obliged to consider, in addition to the legal guilt of the offender, his moral blameworthiness, the gravity of harm caused to the public welfare by his criminal activity, and a myriad of other factors…”.  CJ Chan added that that mere allegations of unlawful discrimination on the part of the A-G were insufficient to invoke the intervention of the court to review his prosecution and “…in the absence of prima facie evidence to the contrary, the inference would be that the Prosecution has based its differentiation on relevant considerations.”

Deeming there being insufficient evidence to prove the prosecution’s violation of Art. 12, and that evidence on record was insufficient to rebut the constitutionality of the A-G’s use of prosecutorial discretion, the Motion was dismissed.

Gut-wrenching scenes filled the courtroom upon the announcement of the verdict, as Ravinthran’s wife collapsed to the floor of the gallery, grief-stricken and crying out in tears as her husband remained largely impassive, seated inside the holding pen.

Ravinthran’s only remaining legal recourse now is to appeal to President Tony Tan for clemency, failing which he will be hanged. His co-accused on the other hand had previously been dealt a non-capital sentence of a 20-year jail term and 24 strokes of the cane –  for carrying out the very same offence.

Following the judgement, Mr Ravi commented that “What is worrying in the judgement is that the prosecutor, with wide discretion, appears to have reserved the right to base his decision partly on moral (non-legal) considerations.”

He added, “Giving such wide discretion to the prosecution and virtually denying any discretion to the court in the mandatory sentence system is a clear departure from the progress made in Commonwealth countries.”

Mr Ravi also stressed that since the prosecution’s considerations in exercising its discretion in this case were never disclosed, this lack of transparency was as an impediment to evaluating the validity or adequacy of these very considerations.

The outcome of the case brings to light several implications that we should regard with significant concern. Specifically, the decision of the Court in this case must be given the highest respect and must be regarded as the definitive judgment upon two very important issues.

First, it appears it sanctions the right of the prosecutor to  pick and chose his targets for prosecution without giving reasons. It is one thing to give a prosecutor a wide latitude. However to exempt him altogether from giving reasons may be said to be difficult to reconcile with the tradition of transparency and the requirement for reasoned decisions that applies generally in the civil and criminal justice system.

Second, it appears the decision allows the prosecutor to offer one potential criminal a lighter outcome or even a total escape in return for his testimony against another. This takes the concept of plea bargaining (where the State essentially buys an accused’s plea of guilty with a promise to go softer on his offence) to a completely new level – that of buying off one criminal to get a conviction of another. This must raise serious issues of whether the testimony is reliable and of the propriety of the State to be in a position to play off one alleged criminal against another. Arguably it entails the purchase of evidence.

These are not uncontroversial postures for a society based on the rule of law to adopt, and these issues go to the very heart of a fair and transparent criminal justice system.

The apparent judicial imprimatur of such conduct will certainly not end the debate, although it may seal the fate of the unfortunate litigants who have lost this battle.

Second Chances would like to thank the writer for this report.

And that’s just how I feel. I can’t even begin to imagine how the family of a death row inmate feels. I can’t even begin to imagine how the inmate himself feels. I don’t think anyone can.

One weekend in January this year, a small group of us gathered over lunch. We chatted, we laughed, we ate. It was just like any other gathering of friends, but that weekend all our thoughts were going to a young, scrawny-looking boy sitting in a cell in Changi Prison. Most of us had never actually met or spoken to him, but it hardly seemed to matter.

Lighting candles and sending a birthday wish to Vui Kong.

We lit candles on a cake and sang a birthday song to Yong Vui Kong that day, and many of us wrote about/to him. We put the finishing touches on a birthday banner, which he eventually got to see for a brief moment in court. I don’t think anyone actually mentioned it, but I know that the thought passed through each of our heads at some point or other: could this be Vui Kong’s last birthday cake?

It’s almost been a year now, and Vui Kong is still with us. A message has been sent out through a volunteer who visited him: “Vui Kong said to tell all of you, thank you. For standing by him, for believing in second chances and for fighting so hard. Let’s hope for an even bigger miracle next year.”

We Believe in Second Chances and the Singapore Anti-Death Penalty Campaign (SADPC) are jointly organising ‘Happy Birthday, Yong Vui Kong‘ at Hong Lim Park on 15 January 2012 to mark Vui Kong’s 24th birthday. We’d all really appreciate – just as we know Vui Kong will – if you all came to show your support for the campaign to save his life. The fight is not over; Vui Kong has not yet received an answer to his appeal for clemency.

Click here for more information about the event, and also to RSVP.

In the 12 years that he was our head of state, former President S R Nathan did not grant a single clemency.

This isn’t a topic that he has spoken much on, but he finally opened up recently during an interview. His response highlights an alarming problem in the clemency process for inmates on death row.

“The constitution clearly lays it down that I have to act on the advice of the cabinet, and the cabinet acts on the advice of the Attorney-General,” he said, explaining how the Attorney-General sifts through all the evidence available and makes a recommendation to the President.
- ‘I have to ask the man up there to forgive me’, 7 December 2011 

Earlier this year, the Court of Appeal confirmed that the President cannot act in his own discretion when it comes to granting clemency to death row inmates, but has to act on the advice of the Cabinet. Nathan now confirms that the Cabinet acts on the advice of the Attorney-General (AG).

However, in these capital punishment cases, the AG’s Chambers acts on behalf of the State as the prosecution. It is the AG’s Chambers who are pushing for the ultimate punishment of death in the first place. Therefore, if the AG is the one who makes the recommendation to the Cabinet and the President, Singapore’s clemency process becomes no more than a farce where the prosecutor decides whether to suspend the very sentence he has invested so much time and energy in securing in the first place.

After charging the offender, prosecuting him at his trial, then fighting against his appeal, just how likely is the AG going to say, “You know what, I was wrong to demand the death penalty in court, this person doesn’t deserve to die after all, let’s pardon him”?

How is this not a blatant conflict of interest, and an unacceptable taint on our clemency process?

Problems, problems everywhere

23-year-old Yong Vui Kong is still waiting for a decision from the President on whether clemency will be granted. S R Nathan once rejected his appeal for clemency in 2009.

The Misuse of Drugs Act stipulates that anyone found guilty of trafficking 15g of heroin and above automatically receives the mandatory death penalty. The judges do not have the discretion to hand down any other sentence; mitigating circumstances cannot be taken into account at all.

This means that the only way for the prosecution to spare an offender from the noose is to find different ways to word the charge they bring against him/her – which raises even more ambiguity, this time with regard to the amount of discretion the prosecution has. The Court of Appeal has yet to issue a verdict on the challenge to prosecutorial discretion.

So this is the system that we are left with:

• When someone is arrested, the Attorney-General’s Chambers, as the prosecution, decides what charges will be brought against him/her. It so far appears as if they are able to exercise their discretion in how they would like to charge the defendant – even if the amount were higher than the amount that attracts the mandatory death penalty the prosecution is able to come up with a lower non-capital charge. (See here)
• If the defendant is found guilty, the judge has no choice except to sentence him/her to death under the mandatory death penalty.
• The defendant is allowed to appeal this verdict before the Court of Appeal. The Attorney-General’s Chambers once again appears on behalf of the State to fight this appeal.
• If the defendant loses his/her appeal, the only hope left is for the President to grant clemency, commuting the death sentence to life imprisonment.
• The President is unable to act in his own discretion. He is bound to act upon the advice of the Cabinet. (See here.)
• The Cabinet is in turn advised by the Attorney-General – who heads the very team that decided upon the charge and prosecuted the death row inmate in the first place. (See here.)

The Attorney-General has power in deciding upon the charge, in prosecuting the offender (while the judges’ hands are tied) and in advising the President and the Cabinet when it comes to the granting of clemencies. Am I the only one who sees a huge problem in this entire process?

Can we be forgiven?

When asked point-blank about how he dealt with death row appeals, Nathan finally said, “I have to ask the man up there to forgive me for what is done for the good of society.”

I don’t believe that Nathan is bad man. Perhaps he really did believe that he was doing the right thing. Perhaps he felt like he didn’t have a choice; after all, he couldn’t have exercised his own discretion without triggering a constitutional crisis. Although I mourn for all those executed during his term (and the many more before) I hope he will find the peace and forgiveness he seeks.

But now that we see the death penalty and the way it is applied in Singapore, now that we are aware of its flaws and injustices, how can we continue to stand for this cruel, unusual, archaic punishment?

If we continue to stand by and do nothing as inmates are led to the slaughter at the end of such a heartless process, who will forgive us for allowing it to happen in all our names?

Featured image from Yahoo! SG

The Minister’s response was just as interesting. In a written reply, Wong said, “Apart from Yong, there were indeed others who were part of the syndicate. Several have been prosecuted for trafficking. One has been detained under the Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Act.” (Read Wong’s full statement here.)

In a recent letter to Yong’s lawyer, M Ravi, the Attorney General’s Chambers (AGC) identified that person as Chia Choon Leng – the very same person Yong had named, in a police statement, as the mastermind of his crime. However the AGC said Yong also made it clear that he did not wish to identify Chia in court. (Read AGC’s letter and M Ravi’s query here.)

The AGC said Prosecution did not call Chia as a witness because his evidence was not necessary for their case. It said it also informed the Defense about the detention, however, Yong’s then-lawyers decided not to call Chia as a witness. According to court records, the Prosecution withdrew charges against Chia due to “the difficulty of the evidence”. Instead, “executive action” was taken against him.

It is unclear why Yong decided not to identify Chia in court. One can only speculate. What is clear though is that despite “the difficulty of the evidence”, Chia remains in custody. This must surely mean that authorities have sufficient reason to detain him. But while Chia will eventually be let go, Yong has been sentenced to hang.

Therein lies the problem with the Mandatory Death Penalty. Our judges’ hands are tied. Once a person is found guilty of trafficking in a certain amount of drugs, the court has no choice but to send him to the gallows. The government has regularly argued that draconian measures are necessary in order to keep Singapore drug-free. However, we can see from Yong’s case that bigger fish are sometimes allowed to get away, not only without conviction, but without charge.

If Singapore wants to be serious about crime prevention, it needs to rethink its strategy. State-sanctioned killing isn’t the answer. It leaves open the possibility that innocent people might be sentenced to death, and in the case of the MDP, it creates outcomes that are manifestly unfair. Very often, drug mules are themselves victims of their circumstances – they tend to be young, vulnerable and ignorant. Chia should be thoroughly investigated and charged, not held without trial. Yong, for his part, should be punished. Drug trafficking is, after all, a serious offense. But he does not deserve to die.

It was a cold and rainy Wednesday evening, rather befitting of the grave issue at hand. I brought along two friends who, it is safe to say, have never put much thought to the death penalty. This probably applies to an overwhelming majority of Singaporeans, who claim we have other more important issues at hand – bread and butter issues, they say.

In all honesty, I didn’t know what to expect from the event, held in a small and crammed room in the back of a bookstore in Bras Basah Complex. But the moment Toshi Kazama took the stage, I was blown away. His enigmatic, passionate, inspiring and humorous self was larger than life and could fill more than a hundred other rooms.

Toshi & Our Precious Things

Toshi is an acclaimed New York-based photographer, who for the past 15 years has been photographing death row inmates in the United States and more recently, Taiwan. What lent even more credibility to his messages of love, healing, walking in another person’s shoes, and lapses in the judicial system, was that he had been a victim of attempted murder. Yet amidst all that craziness and hurt (he’s deaf in one ear with a weak sense of balance), he is still an anti-death penalty activist today.

But why? Toshi clued us in on this, going back to his first slide that read “Eyes on Preciousness”, the title of this photography project.

He repeatedly asked, “What is the one precious thing you want to protect?”

To him, it is life. To me, it is also life. The sanctity of life sets the basis on which all human experiences originate. Without life, we are nothing – no family, no friends, no loved ones, no us. Once I was able to identify that one precious thing, my guiding principle became clear as day.

Murder in any form is still murder.

The magic in Toshi’s photographs was the reality and humanity that instantly connected us to the death row inmates. We saw faces we can all relate to, while bearing in mind that about half of them have been executed. They could easily be our children, cousins, nieces and nephews. They are not monsters, but real people with real problems and real families of their own – just like you and me.

I suppose when we start seeing them as human beings, we begin to fall under the weight of the death penalty. Just because we do not personally trigger the trap door, administer the lethal injection or engage the electric chair, it does not mean that execution is a distant event. The state is killing people in our name, yours and mine. In Singapore, it’s on Fridays at 6am. Do we really want that kind of burden to carry and blood on our hands?

Toshi said something that still haunts me, three days later.

He said, “We go on with our lives, because we don’t know when we’re going to die. But [the death penalty] is completely scheduled and administrated… People say, ‘I support death penalty, I think this penalty is necessary.’ But they don’t want to be the executioner themselves. They don’t have the guts to pull the trigger and blow out the death row inmate in the name of justice. They think as long as someone else does it, it’s fine. I feel like if you cannot kill, why ask others to kill?”

If you shun from death or cringe at the sight of violence, is it right then to ask someone else to kill for you?

Do you know during an electric chair execution in the United States, there are two switches requiring two prison wardens to engage, but only one switch is connected to the chair? The prison wardens will never know which one of them sent the inmate to his death. What a telling design, don’t you think? Killing someone is hardly a happy event and no one wants to be responsible for it.

Now, death penalty advocates claim that the lethal injection is a more humane way to execute as it is painless, in an attempt to justify their support for state-sanctioned murder.

To this, Toshi quipped, “Are you sure? Have you tried it? Is there a humane way to kill someone? Would you prefer – the electric chair or the lethal injection? You choose.”

To a person whose most precious thing is life, murder in any form is still murder.

Moreover, there are way too many problems surrounding police investigations and prosecutorial processes that it is naive to think that we have never ever sentenced an innocent person to the gallows. Till the day human judgement is infallible, death penalty has no place in civil society.

In my mind, death penalty not only mocks the very justice it claims to serve, but also instils the very violence it tries to deter. What exactly are we trying to achieve with it?

Healing & Closure

Perhaps, healing and closure for the victims’ families.

While Toshi reaches out to death row inmates, he also reaches out to victims’ families to bring about closure, healing and understanding.

He recounted, “I’ve met so many victims’ families. Inmates’ families’ tears do not make them feel any better.”

Studies by psychologists have shown that there are five stages of grief: disbelief, yearning, anger, depression and acceptance. So at what stage does the death of the perpetuator fit in? Is it anger? But anger isn’t the last stage of grief. Acceptance is.

Toshi expressed this stand, “All these victims, when the murder happens, they all have sadness or anger. Over a period of time, all these victims change, they have to change. Because victims’ families cannot go on with such a huge anger and hatred that would torture them in their daily lives. One way or another, if they decide to live, they have to somehow make peace within themselves to go on.”

What he said reminded me of a picture I saw recently:

Penalty vs. Prevention

A country that has her eyes on the death penalty is looking for a quick fix, a kind of accountability to the victims’ families. That intention is certainly not wrong. But what is suitable punishment? Apart from punishment, what else are we doing to prevent such tragedies from happening?

Are we being myopic by focusing too much on punishment and too little on prevention? Does permanently and irreversibly eradicating perpetrators solve the bigger problem? Tell me, what is preventing another murderer from appearing in our midst tomorrow?

We are removing the weeds, but not the roots. We need to find out why people do what they do. Toshi found a common denominator amongst the death row inmates he has met – the lack of love in their lives. Instead of pointing all our guns at them, maybe we should re-examine our society. Not to say they should not be punished for their crimes, of course, but a thorough reflection of our society is in order. 

What kind of society do we want to build? One of violence or one of compassion?

Is the death penalty the only way we know how to create our ideal future?

Fighting Against Ignorance

This is a question we have to answer collectively as a country.

Some might claim we already have, referring to the survey done by The Sunday Times in 2006, where 96% of Singaporeans back the death penalty.

My question is how many of those that were surveyed understood the death penalty fully and all the problems surrounding it. Even in 2011, I still meet people who are oblivious to the mandatory death penalty. My only fear is that majority of Singaporeans still holds a rather simplistic viewpoint to this issue.

The death penalty is a reality here. Such travesty of life is not a distant event. We never know if someone’s life is going to end by order of the state in our name, on any given Friday at 6am. Real lives are at stake and our silence endorses death. So when people absurdly argue that tackling bread and butter issues are more important, I simply ask them with a straight face, “Why do they have to be mutually exclusive?”

Admittedly, this is a complex and multifaceted affair; which is exactly why we need robust debates to make sense of it all. But the truth is robust debates cannot happen constructively without an informed citizenry. All I am asking is for all Singaporeans to ensure they are truly informed before committing themselves to an opinion. Because this is not just a fight against the death penalty; this is a fight against ignorance.

And by the way, I thought I saw something in my friends change after hearing Toshi speak that day. I guess everything has to start somewhere!

For the past 15 years Mr Kazama had been photographing death row inmates, execution chambers, crime scenes and families, using his skills as a professional photographer to explore the death penalty and accompanying issues. He had wanted to explore social problems, and had settled on the death penalty as a topic that encompassed all of the problems he had considered: drugs, violence, crime, death, etc.

Michael Shawn Barnes, Photo by Toshi Kazama

Beginning with a 16-year-old death row inmate in Alabama, Mr Kazama began to meet more and more people, photographing more and more inmates. He also started to speak in different countries, presenting his photographs and sharing his experience in the hopes of getting people to think about the death penalty, and what it says about us as a society.

8 years ago, he himself was assaulted and seriously wounded. Doctors had not expected him to survive, but he did. His friends and family had been hurt, angry and furious, but he told his children, “Hate the crime, get angry with the violence, but never hate the person.”

Throughout his presentation Mr Kazama highlighted issues that he had observed in the past 15 years as he delved deeper into the death penalty, and said that meeting and photographing death row inmates had dispelled any pre-conceived notions he had had about what murderers and criminals should look like and be like. “I used to think that they were all monsters, but that first 16-year-old boy was just like any kid in my son’s class.”

His photographs took us all a step back from all the statistics and arguments and talk, and made us face up to the people society has condemned, and the mechanisms put in place for us to systematically kill them: the holding cell with the black screen, the sad table with artificial flowers for last meals, the electric chair with a mark on the seat where the inmates’ tailbones burn as they die, the gurney with the leather straps where lethal injections are administered, the white sheet in the middle of a room of black sand where inmates have to lie face-down to get shot, the secret viewing room for victims’ families to watch the inmate’s family crying as the execution takes place.

“This is reality,” Mr Kazama said. “It’s not like a distant event. It’s happening in your community too.”

Other reading:

Co-founder Kirsten’s thoughts – The most precious thing.

Lianain Films – “All My Preconceived Notions Went Away”

Callan Tham – “You Know, Down to the Second, When You’re Gonna Die”

Justicia Phuang – Our Precious Things

If you attended the event and wrote a blog post on your experience, please share the link with us so we can add it to the list!

Documentary filmmaker Jon Keng followed human rights lawyer M Ravi to Malaysia, where he was visiting Mr Cheong Kah Pin, father of Cheong Chun Yin. We see Mr Cheong at home, still living alongside all Chun Yin’s belongings, constantly reminded of his son’s situation.

Through this film, Ravi reminds us that beyond all debates and reasoning, statistics and arguments, we should never forget that compassion is what makes us human.