Candlelight vigil planned ahead of Pannir Selvam Pranthaman’s execution

A candlelight vigil is set to take place on Wednesday night in remembrance of Pannir Selvam Pranthaman, who is scheduled for execution on 20 February 2025. Organisers say the event will also serve as a collective memorial for the 12 individuals executed in the past 12 months under Singapore’s capital punishment laws. The Singapore Prison Service (SPS) recently notified Pannir’s family of the execution date, granting them additional visiting hours in the lead-up to his scheduled hanging. This notice came less than two weeks after 20 civil society and human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, urged Malaysia to take "immediate and decisive action" to advocate for Pannir, who has exhausted all legal avenues since his sentencing in 2017. In a statement on 6 February, these organisations highlighted that "nothing stands between Pannir having his life taken away from him at any given moment by the Singapore government," calling on Malaysian authorities to intervene. The upcoming vigil is expected to draw activists, supporters, and members of the public who oppose the death penalty. Pannir’s case has sparked widespread discussion about Singapore’s strict drug laws, which mandate the death penalty for trafficking more than 15g of heroin unless specific legal conditions are met. Pannir was found to have been a courier but could not be spared the mandatory death penalty because the prosecution refused to issue him a Certificate of Substantive Assistance (CSA). It was not disputed that Pannir had provided investigators with information about the person he was meant to deliver drugs to, offering details in multiple statements before the conclusion of his trial. This information was used to facilitate the arrest of Zamri—who operated under the alias "Jimmy"—on 14 October 2014. However, the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) later stated that the information provided by Pannir "was not new information, was not useful to the CNB, and was not used or relied on" in their operation. Despite arguments from Pannir’s lawyer that the CSA should be granted based on the reliability and potential practical value of the information in disrupting drug trafficking networks, the prosecution declined to issue it. The Court of Appeal ultimately upheld the prosecution’s stance, ruling that for a CSA to be granted, the information must have been actively used by the CNB in drug enforcement efforts. With this decision, Pannir remained on death row. Pannir, 37, has spent nearly a decade on death row. Since his sentencing, he has expressed his experiences and reflections through poetry, songs, and letters. In his 2019 poem, Death Row Literature, he wrote: “Before taking your life, they will take everything else away.” He dedicated the poem to his close friend Nagaenthran K Dharmalingam, who was executed in April 2022. Pannir’s family has been actively campaigning for him. His sisters, Sangkari and Angelia, have worked with Malaysian musicians to transform his lyrics into songs, while also running Sebaran Kasih, an NGO supporting marginalised communities. Their efforts have kept Pannir’s story in the public eye as his execution date nears. As the vigil approaches, advocates continue to call for clemency and question the fairness of Singapore’s capital punishment system. The event aims to serve as both a protest against Pannir’s impending execution and a broader statement against the use of the death penalty.

 

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