Death Penalty News

A shocking, devastating loss that none of us saw coming. Rest in Power, M Ravi. How do I process something that doesn’t feel real? As I'm writing this, the amount of information I have is distressingly small. M Ravi is dead. He was pronounced dead at Tan Tock Seng Hospital this morning. The police say they don’t suspect foul play, but investigations are ongoing. None of us saw this coming.

M Ravi never gave up despite the odds stacked against him by the Singapore regime, which has always used its grip on the legal process to silence critics. M Ravi, one of Singapore's best-known personalities who was at the forefront of legal cases challenging the PAP regime over human rights violations, has died. He was 56. The news has come as a shock to friends and activists. Singapore's The Straits Times reported that police were investigating the "unnatural death".

Ravi Madasamy, a high-profile lawyer who represented death-row inmates and campaigned against capital punishment, was found dead in the early hours, prompting a police investigation into an unnatural death KUALA LUMPUR — Prolific Singapore lawyer Ravi Madasamy who tried to save Malaysian drug traffickers from the gallows found dead in the early hours with police investigating a case of unnatural death. Lawyer Eugene Thuraisingam, who had previously represented 56-year-old Ravi in court and described him as a friend, said he was deeply saddened by the news.

On 14 Aug 2025, Singapore granted clemency to Tristan Tan, commuting his death sentence to life to “reduce disparity” with a co-accused. Yet this disparity arose from opaque prosecutorial discretion, not judicial findings. Meanwhile, clemency was denied to Nagaenthran, who had intellectual disability — exposing troubling inconsistencies in how mercy is applied.  On 14 August 2025, Singapore’s Cabinet advised President Tharman Shanmugaratnam to commute the death sentence of 33-year-old Tristan Tan Yi Rui to life imprisonment.

Pannir Selvam Pranthaman is at risk of joining a long list of drug couriers who have been executed under Singapore's controversial drug laws A 37-year-old man is at risk of becoming the latest Malaysian citizen to be executed under Singapore's controversial drug laws, which have been criticised for victimising many drug mules from poor families. Pannir Selvam Pranthaman is facing "imminent execution", according to his former lawyer M Ravi, some six years after he received a stay of execution just hours before he was scheduled to be hanged on May 24, 2019. 

M Ravi, who was disbarred in May, pleaded guilty to the charges last month. PETALING JAYA: Singaporean anti-death penalty activist and former lawyer M Ravi has been sentenced to 14 weeks’ jail after pleading guilty to charges of voluntarily causing hurt, harassment and causing a public nuisance. According to CNA, the 55-year-old was also fined S$5,500 and ordered by a district court to pay S$30 in compensation to one of his victims.

SINGAPORE: Yong Vui Kong is alive and well, though still incarcerated, as he sees the 15th year since a last-minute appeal saved his life from the gallows. Vui Kong’s story was well publicized after he was arrested for possession of 47.27 grams of heroin. This occurred in 2007 when the Malaysian was only 19 years old.

Home Minister Targets Anti-Death Penalty Activists The Singaporean government since mid-April has issued at least four execution notices to individuals convicted of drug-related offenses. They are among 36 death row prisoners taking part in a legal action relating to their constitutional right to legal aid following appeal. None of these prisoners currently have legal representation.

Singapore Supreme Court dismissed appeal by 36 death row inmates challenging new measures to prevent execution delays. Chief Justice deems the challenge lacking current basis and an abuse of court process. SINGAPORE: The Court of Appeal of Singapore on Wednesday (27 March) dismissed an appeal lodged by 36 death row prisoners challenging two new provisions introduced by a law aimed at preventing death row inmates from exploiting court processes to delay their executions.

(Bangkok) – Singapore’s government carried out its highest number of executions in more than a decade and sought to intimidate anti-death penalty activists, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2024. The government silenced critical voices in the lead-up to the 2023 presidential elections and censored independent reporting. “Singapore reversed the Covid-19 hiatus on executions, kicking its death row machinery into overdrive,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The government’s reinvigorated use of the death penalty merely highlighted its disregard for human rights protections and the inherent cruelty of capital punishment.”

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia —  Singapore on Wednesday hanged another citizen for trafficking marijuana, the second in three weeks, as it clung firmly to the death penalty despite growing calls for the city-state to halt drug-related executions. The 37-year-old man was executed after his last-ditch bid to reopen his case was dismissed by the court Tuesday without a hearing, said activist Kokila Annamalai of the Transformative Justice Collective, which advocates for abolishing the death penalty in Singapore. The man had been imprisoned for seven years and was convicted in 2019 for trafficking about 3.3 pounds of cannabis, she said. His bid to reopen his case was based on DNA evidence and fingerprints that tied him to a much smaller amount, which he admitted to possessing, but the court rejected it, she added.

The UIA-IROL is outraged by the repressive measures recently taken against prominent Singapore attorney M. Ravi Madasamy (M Ravi) in a decision handed down by the Singapore Supreme Court, in an appeal filed by the Law Society of Singapore seemingly because of this representation of clients accused of capital crimes, including death sentences handed down for narcotics crimes.  The decision follows M. Ravi’s public criticism of the prosecution and the Law Society of Singapore, in the context of the representation of a client facing a death sentence for drug-related offenses. M Ravi has been an international human rights lawyer in Singapore for over 20 years, and has spent years representing landmark human rights and constitutional law cases, including death penalty cases. In its decision dated March 21, 2023, the Court of Three Judges of the Court of Appeal of Singapore imposed a five years’ suspension to M. Ravi, the maximum possible sanction for lawyers, and ordered him to bear the...

M Ravi says he chose to dedicate his legal career to the cause of human rights and access to justice in Singapore. Prominent human rights lawyer M Ravi was today suspended for five years after a court in Singapore said he had made "grave and baseless accusations of improper conduct" against the republic's attorney-general as well as officers from the AG's Chambers and the Singapore Law Society. Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon delivered the decision, the maximum sanction possible for misconduct on the part of lawyers, Channel NewsAsia reported. Ravi, who had made a name for himself representing prisoners on death row, including Malaysian inmates in Singapore, was suspended over remarks he gave in an interview on the case of a drug runner named Gobi Avedian.

Human Rights Lawyer M Ravi is appealing for public support after the Singapore Attorney General (AG) rejected the request to waive the adverse personal cost of S$11,400 ordered against Ms Violet Netto and himself in the representation of three death row inmates. Mr Ravi was assisting Ms Netto in the representation of three death row inmates, Roslan Bakar and Rosman bin Abdullah and Pausi Jefridin, who were served with execution notices a year ago. The three were sentenced to death over drug trafficking offences. The applications from the 3 sought multiple declarations in relation to the death penalty for drug offences under the Misuse of Drugs Act (Cap. 185) (MDA) in Singapore.

The proposed legal changes to clarify whether death row prisoners can file last-minute applications after exhausting all other avenues were welcomed by members of the legal fraternity, with several lawyers saying that the moves will make post-appeal processes more efficient without infringing on prisoners' rights. But a few lawyers disagreed, raising concerns that the proposals, if passed, would set too high a bar for cases where a human life is at stake. Some were also concerned that they could turn more lawyers away from picking up such death row cases on a pro bono basis, hence limiting legal access for this group. Speaking to TODAY on the Post-Appeal Applications in Capital Cases Bill that was tabled by the Law Ministry on Monday (Nov 7), six lawyers said that it would make the process of post-appeal applications clearer if passed. Such applications could involve stays of execution or judicial reviews that challenge the President’s decision to not grant clemency. RELATED |  Ne...

Under proposed amendments to the law, if a prisoner or their lawyer has abused court processes, they will not be allowed to file a post-appeal application unless there is new evidence. A new Bill introduced in Parliament on Monday (Nov 7) will clarify the court processes for capital cases that have exhausted the appeals and clemency avenues, designating the Court of Appeal as the only court to hear related applications. In some cases, a single judge may be able to hear the application. This is a break from current practices, where such cases can be heard in both the High Court and the Court of Appeal. Additionally, if either the prisoner or their lawyer had previously abused court processes, permission to file the application will not be granted unless there is new relevant evidence in the case. This comes after several judgments in which the Court of Appeal chastised the abuse of court processes and the dragging out of post-appeal capital cases. In a joint press release on Monday (Nov...

Below is my response to an open letter I received from Singapore‘s Home Affairs Ministry on 22 October, reacting to my previous statements on the death penalty in Singapore. Dear Minister Shanmugam, I thank you and the Ministry for Home Affairs for contacting me last week. I have enormous respect for Singapore and Singaporeans and for everything your country has achieved over the last decades. It is because of this respect that I feel compelled to speak out when I see things go as horribly wrong as Singapore’s use of the death penalty. And I am not a lone voice raising this. There are many Singaporeans, including lawyers, human rights defenders, civil society organisations, and others, who have consistently expressed the same concerns. RELATED |  Singapore invites billionaire Branson to death penalty debate Allow me to share a personal story. When I was young man, my father told me about my grandfather, who was a barrister and then a High Court Judge in the UK over a century ago. A...

The law and home affairs ministries on Thursday (Sept 8) rebutted recent statements made by two international organisations that called for Singapore to halt executions, saying that they contained “misconceptions and inaccuracies”. The statements were made last month by the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) headquartered in the United Kingdom and the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) based in Switzerland. Both statements, issued two days apart, had called for Singapore to place a moratorium on executions with a view to abolish the death penalty. The ICJ had also called on the Singapore authorities to stop using "punitive" cost orders against lawyers representing death-row inmates. Noting that lawyers in Singapore have in recent months been ordered to pay costs for failed court challenges by death-row inmates, IBAHRI’s co-chair Mark Stephens said that such punishments “raise concerns around access to justice and effective legal representat...

We all know it is not easy to be a civil society activist in Singapore. It is even harder if you campaign against the death penalty with relentless determination and an overarching commitment to justice, together with the hope that things might one day change. This is the case of Kokila Annamalai, an abolitionist campaigner who helped me better understand possible avenues to changing the status quo in Singapore.  The execution of Malaysian national Nagaenthran Dharmalingam in April was a turning point not only for activists like Kokila but for a multitude of citizens that for the first time had the courage to protest against the system. Unfortunately, nothing has changed since the execution. Earlier this month, two other death row inmates, Nazeri Bin Lajim and Abdul Rahim Bin Shapiee, were hanged.  People outside of Singapore know about the draconian law, but many do not understand the complexities of a legal system that the Transformative Justice Collective (TJC) rightly says...

The Singapore Prison Service also disputed events laid out in a complaint by the sister of Abdul Rahim Shapiee, who is due to hang on Friday. SINGAPORE: A High Court judge on Wednesday (Aug 3) struck out a lawsuit filed by 24 death row inmates who claimed that their access to lawyers for appeals and reviews of their cases were obstructed. In a civil claim filed against the Attorney-General on Monday, the inmates argued that the power of the courts to order costs against defence lawyers made them afraid to take up the legal challenges. The inmates sought a declaration that the costs provisions were unconstitutional and therefore null, void and unlawful. They also sought damages for breach of the defendant's statutory duty to allow "access to justice". Under the Criminal Procedure Code, the Court of Appeal and the High Court can order costs to be paid by any party to any other party in a case, of such amount as the court thinks fit. Costs orders are generally justified only...