Obituary: M Ravi

Perhaps his finest hour was amongst the Chinese in Sandakan, the breezy, briny-aired port and eco-tourist gateway on Borneo’s north-eastern tip, where Sabahan flags fly high, dried mackerels dangle from raffia, and primates hang off branches. In 2007, Yong Vui Kong, a 22-year-old Malaysian man, had been lured into carrying drugs into Singapore, and was later sentenced to death. Aware of the Singapore government’s zero-tolerance approach towards drugs, Sandakan society had likely given up hope for their homeboy.

Surely nobody from Singapore, that money-obsessed, navel-gazing neighbour, would help? Wrong. In he stormed, or maybe sashayed: charming politicians and community leaders, even those not against the death penalty; roping them in to gather signatures for the petition; speaking to hundreds on the streets, in wet markets, at a food centre; and singing to Yong’s depressed, silent mother in her tiny flat. He reframed the devil incarnate perspective that his gleaming city-state so gleefully pushed: Yong was, like so many other mules, “a victim of poverty, misguided youth and social conditions”.