Remembering M Ravi, 1969 - 2025

M. Ravi. A name well known to us. What drove this selfless person to rise each day and fight — often for people detained on death row without a voice? At his core was a quiet conviction that overrode everything else. That moral compass put him at real risk, making him an enemy of the Singapore state, but also making him a rare and powerful advocate for those with no one in their corner. He simply could not tolerate silence in the face of severe human rights abuses, even at great personal cost to his own health and livelihood. Working alongside Ravi, his conviction was plain to see. He would become animated speaking about his clients and their families, determined to put everything on the line for some measure of justice and to hold the state to account. Even in the most stressful situations, your warm smile radiated to all around you and brought a level of humanity into every encounter. It was inspiring to watch his unwavering approach to challenging the death penalty and advocating for LGBT rights. He was a disruptive force on a conservative judiciary, ensuring that if the state was going to commit human rights abuses, it would at least have to fight in court, expend resources, and face full media scrutiny and international condemnation. Ravi exposed the full extent of Singapore’s treatment of its most vulnerable. In fighting for every life with such determination, Ravi truly modelled compassion, courage and what it means to be a human rights defender. As a founding member of the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network, he was fundamental in challenging the use and scope of the death penalty across Asia. Ravi, when things felt hopeless, you kept fighting. We will miss you, and may your memory live on in the lives you saved and the people you changed.

For M Ravi The lawyer has shuttered his office after crossing the river at the narrowest point. You know Singapore for its death penalty, but many have fought on behalf of life. The cloudy summit stirs our elation, the survivors sing with their jade pendants. Tall bamboos stop the sun from entering, as secretly streams merge and surge. I am moved by this amassing of the genuine, this memorial of a day in the sun. Everyone overawed by death’s reputation, we miss the company of Madasamy. After Stephen Owen's translation of Du Fu's poem "In the Company of Li Yong of Beihai, Feasting in Lixia Pavilion." Owen notes, "The eminent writer and calligrapher Li Yong (678–747) became Governor of Beihai early in the Tianbao Reign, and was killed by the enmity of Li Linfu (d. 753)."

Missing you, Singapore won't be the same. Will raise your name in honour, come 2030

The Transformative Justice Collective (TJC) mourns the passing of M Ravi, a human rights lawyer who repeatedly went above and beyond to fight for the lives of death row prisoners in Singapore. Ravi died in the early hours of 24 December, and was given a final send-off, full of sound and light and love, by family and friends on 26 December. There was no lawyer like M Ravi. For many years, he stepped forward to take on the cases of death row prisoners, often at times when most assumed that all hope had already been lost. In 2009, just two days before Yong Vui Kong was scheduled for execution, Ravi took over the case and won Vui Kong a stay of execution. That set things in motion for a campaign—spanning across both Singapore and Malaysia—to save Vui Kong’s life, a constitutional challenge against the mandatory death penalty, and legal applications that led to the courts making clear that the President of Singapore does not act on their own discretion when deciding on clemency appeals, and that it is the Cabinet that decides on these matters of life and death. Most importantly, it kept Vui Kong alive long enough to see the Misuse of Drugs Act get amended, inserting narrow carve-outs to the mandatory death penalty for drugs. Once these amendments came into force, Vui Kong was found to fit the criteria and was re-sentenced to life imprisonment with caning. Vui Kong is alive today because of Ravi. In 2020, the Court of Appeal set aside Gobi Avedian’s death sentence and reinstated the original sentence of 15 years’ imprisonment and 10 strokes of the cane. This, again, was because of Ravi, who’d taken on Gobi’s case pro bono and filed a criminal motion asking the court to review Gobi’s death sentence in the light of developments in case law. At that point, Gobi had exhausted his criminal appeal and his petition for presidential clemency had already been rejected. If Ravi hadn’t stepped in, Gobi would likely have been hanged. Instead, Gobi is home with his family today. These are just examples of lives Ravi saved with his courage and commitment to fight the death penalty. But Ravi also filed legal applications touching on key constitutional, human rights, and procedural issues: challenging the constitutionality of judicial caning, demanding discovery and accountability from the state for forwarding prisoners’ private correspondence without their knowledge or consent, asking important questions about the over-representation of minorities on death row. Some of the applications he filed resulted in censure from the courts and cost orders against him amounting to thousands of dollars. But, to Ravi, the lives of people on death row were more important than fines and rebukes. He often took risks that no other lawyer in Singapore was willing to take, as long as it meant there was a chance—however slim—that a life might be saved. Members of TJC were at Ravi’s wake and funeral. We paid our respects to a man who’d fought tooth and nail against capital punishment, and remembered the indelible impact he’d made on Singapore’s anti-death penalty movement. We now have to adjust to a world without Ravi, but we will carry his spirit and conviction within us as the movement for abolition grows and evolves. Rest in Peace, dear Ravi.

We hope that you find this tribute to M a place of comfort, support and inspiration for you to visit whenever you want or need to.

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