Another execution eve on the lawn of Hong Lim Park

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Singapore: On execution eves, and they are regular here, mournful Singaporeans make their way to Hong Lim Park, a tidy space between Chinatown and the river, to squeeze their constitutional rights from a rather dry People’s Action Party stone.

I went along for a look a couple of weeks ago, taking my place on the immaculate lawns among 200 or so others, almost all of them young. The occasion was the night-time vigil for Malaysian national Pannir Selvam, who was to be hanged at Changi Prison at dawn.

At the vigil for condemned prisoner Pannir Selvam in Singapore.Credit: Zach Hope

His crime was smuggling into Singapore four packets of heroin, totalling 51.84 grams. Now 37, he has been on death row since 2017.

Singapore liberally dispenses death – there were nine executions last year, at least one this year, and about 50 are on the waiting list. Most are drug criminals. In December 2005, the state killed Australian man Van Nguyen for carrying 396 grams of heroin.

Aside from the hangings and canings (yes, canings), it might surprise some Australians that this park is the only place in outwardly democratic Singapore that citizens can assemble for protest – as long as it has been approved by the state.

Organisers for Pannir’s vigil had to file an application showing a program list, the speakers’ names (strictly no foreigners) and how the assembly would be promoted.

Death row prisoner Pannir Selvam.Credit: Facebook

Haunted by 1960s race riots, or the thought of damage to a precious status quo, the People’s Action Party (PAP) – the only party to rule independent Singapore – insists that whatever protests do take place contain no religious content.

If an organiser wishes to distribute brochures to attendees or put up banners, the artwork must first be submitted for inspection.

Speakers must refrain from causing “feelings of enmity, hatred, ill-will or hostility” between races, which all sounds quite nice and harmonious – especially if it’s your race wielding the power.

Peaceful protest is a fundamental right in democratic states. Singapore, though, has a bob each way. The Constitution offers citizens “the right to assemble peaceably and without arms” while at the same time permitting the government to impose “restrictions as it considers necessary”.

The word “necessary” does a lot of work in Singapore. Protest the war in Gaza? Not allowed.

Pannir’s vigil was approved for Hong Lim Park. Most death vigils are, if they meet the strict conditions and are contained in this space.

This one was angry, but peaceful. The crowd chanted and held placards. They swayed tea lights to music, some of it written by Pannir, who became a poet. The speeches against the death penalty were plentiful, sometimes powerful.

Some activists, such as Jolovan Wham, like to push the geographical and policy boundaries.

Singaporean activist Jolovan Wham.

The 45-year-old social worker is among the half a dozen or more compatriots who sometimes take their vigils to the footpaths near Changi Prison, far from Hong Lim Park.

They clutch photos of the condemned and hoist candles. They will also sing some songs and bow for a minute’s silence. “Then, we just sit there in quiet contemplation,” Wham told me.

Not for the first time, Wham was charged last month under the Public Order Act for taking part in a public assembly without a permit.

Why does he do it, knowing that he faces a $S5000 ($6000) fine, or even jail time if – like previously – he refuses to pay?

“I think it’s important to draw attention to the ridiculousness of these laws,” he said. “I am only exercising my right to freedom of assembly.

“I don’t want to feel like a prisoner in my own country, where I can’t express myself freely. I’m not causing a disturbance, I’m not inciting or participating in violence; why can’t I stand freely wherever I want?”

I asked the Singapore government this question. At the time of publication, it was yet to respond.

The activists see capital punishment for drug crime as backwards, ineffective and barbaric – out of step with other developed nations and the image of progress, success and sense that Singapore likes to project.

The city state deals out mandatory hangings for importing as little as 15 grams of heroin. In addition, the burden of proof is reversed for alleged smugglers with more than two grams. This means the court had to assume Pannir knew what he was carrying and that it was for trafficking.

Pannir’s backers say he was a hapless and naive young man duped by a shifty Malaysian called Anand. The judge found Pannir was not credible.

Without a “certificate of substantive assistance”, which would have signalled that the accused helped bust drug trafficking operations, the judge had no option other than to sentence him to hang. Curiously, prosecutors issue the certificates.

There is no comparable punishment in Australia for Pannir’s relatively small haul of 52 pure grams. Such amounts don’t even make the news. In one recent case from Western Australia, a man and a woman were convicted of personally smuggling 182 grams of pure heroin into Perth from overseas. The man got a non-parole period of four years and six months. The woman’s non-parole was two years and four months.

The Australian-Singapore differences could hardly be more stark.

Singapore, however, can point to some of the safest big-city streets in the world. It is nothing to walk alone here at night. My wife and I regularly leave the baby’s pram downstairs near the footpath. It hasn’t been nicked. Yet.

Home Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam says his country’s drug policies are both “necessary” and “effective”. In a lengthy ministerial statement last year, he reeled off various drug crises from around the world, none of which were Singapore’s.

When the United Nations took up the activists’ cause, the Singaporean ambassador to the UN wrote back tersely that the boffins needed to “examine the facts” before getting on his country’s back.

At Pannir’s vigil, 12 cardboard tombstones with names were lined up in rows on the lawn, each of them representing a recent execution. I was standing by this “cemetery” with my notepad out when a woman named Haseenah Koyakutty smiled and asked if I was a journalist.

We got talking, and she explained that her brother, Jamal, was in a Chinese prison for drug offences. The government there had commuted his death sentence.

She asked if I thought the Singaporean government might grant Pannir a stay of execution. Having no idea, I turned the question back to her.

“I am a firm believer in hope from nowhere,” she replied. “But it takes a village.”

Near the end of the vigil, as they readied to sing We Shall Overcome, news came through from Pannir’s family that a court had ordered a last-minute stay, allowing another round of legal wrangling.

Haseenah was crying. “See!” she exclaimed. “We have to act!”

The crowd cheered and hugged. But they knew this was temporary. Soon, they would be back, if not yet for Pannir, then for another on the island’s bursting death row.