LETTER | We refer to the report 'Was Singapore rushing to hang my brother?'

We did what we could to fight for Pannir’s life. We tried to get Singapore's Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) to issue a Certificate of Substantive Assistance as Pannir did give them some solid leads and hints on the activities of the drug mule recruiter that he interacted with.

The aforementioned certificate would pardon Pannir of the death penalty and instead place him in life imprisonment. But the CNB has refused to do this till today. We tried to gather leads and evidence ourselves by physically scouting around the locations Pannir mentioned where he met the recruiter.

We found some success, and the evidence has been passed to the authorities both in Singapore and Malaysia. What will happen next remains yet unknown. But our fight continues. Our lawyers are finding points to refute the sentence he received, and we, his family, are continuing the fight in our own ways.

Sometimes, I wish we can time travel back to earlier days when we were younger, and such concerns worried us not. The journey of little Pannir, those carefree days bring back so much happy memories for us.

On does when we are tired and weary, we think about those memories we have of Pannir. We cry and we gain back the vitality and energy we need to persevere on. Yet, we have it better, as no matter how hard I try to explain it, I can never comprehend what a day in Pannir’s life is like now.

While being on the death row, Pannir is placed in a six feet by six feet cage, with nothing but a one-inch thick blanket and a floor mat to sleep on. He has no mattress and no pillows. He lives in a world where he says, “[...] seconds turn to minutes, minutes turn into hours and hours into days.”

“Yet every second of every minute of every hour of every day is the same as the one that had just passed. Time moves yet it is as though it remains completely still. All remains the same.”

The shower water is his drinking water. It has been years since he took a hot shower, the water he gets in his cage is cold. Adding to the grimness is the dim and low lights used in the cage. No natural light enters the cell. “There is more bad than good, more sadness than happiness and each day we get closer to turning into hollow beings, devoid of emotions, senses and will,” he says.

I am not here to argue that he is right, and he is not guilty. I know and understand that he, in fact, is. But the mechanisms for correcting and punishing him have to be more humane and better. Now it only seems as though his punishers are only hell-bent on stamping out every trace of humanity within him and all death row prisoners in Changi, making them dead internally before getting them dead externally.

This life had brought so much suffering and pain for Pannir. No sibling, truly, can accept this fate for their brother. He is stuck in this Changi Prison, left with nothing but memories of his past and armed with nothing to deal with the present and the future. A world that only a few know, and even fewer experience.

Each year, when it is my brother’s birthday on July 31, I would wonder if would be his last one. However, we have to remain positive and hopeful for him, even when he is not. My only wish is for me to celebrate Pannir’s birthday with him and my family and I am ready to give up anything for that. 

The writer is Pannir Selvam's brother.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.