16 years ago, Filipino overseas worker Mary Jane Veloso arrived in Indonesia after being told a job was waiting for her there.

When she arrived at Yogyakarta airport on April 25 2010, 2.6 kilograms of heroin were discovered in a suitcase she was carrying. Though she maintained that she had no knowledge of the drugs and that the suitcase had been given to her by others, she was ultimately convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to death.

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11 years ago, in April 2015, Mary Jane was moved to Nusa Kambangan, the island where Indonesia carries out executions, where she was due to be executed by firing squad. Barely an hour before her scheduled execution, following campaigns against her sentence and developments in the Philippines relating to her case, she was granted a last-minute reprieve.

18 months ago, on December 18 2024, after sustained legal and diplomatic efforts in Indonesia and the Philippines, Mary Jane was repatriated to her home country. Upon her arrival she was taken to a women’s correctional facility, where she is currently being detained.

Earlier this week, her lawyers announced that she would be allowed to testify in court against her alleged recruiters for the first time since returning home. While her legal team has welcomed this development as an opportunity for Mary Jane to tell her story on the record, they are also continuing their efforts to secure full, unconditional clemency and her release from prison.

Trafficking, or Trafficked?

In November 2025, I published an interview with Mary Jane’s lawyer, Edre Olalia, discussing his work on Mary Jane’s case in both Indonesia and the Philippines. Then, in March this year, I was commissioned to produce a podcast on Mary Jane’s case by the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network (ADPAN) alongside the Coalition Against the Death Penalty (CADP) in the Philippines.

There was limited time and a limited budget (plus several thousand miles between my current location and Southeast Asia), but I was lucky enough to arrange a conversation between Edre and Yuni Asriyanti, the commissioner at Indonesian rights group the National Commission on Violence against Women, commonly known as Komnas Perempuan.

The discussion between Yuni and Edre, chaired by ADPAN’s Regional Director Tom Temprosa, provides remarkable first-hand accounts of the legal and advocacy work in two countries to save Mary Jane.

The finished episode is Trafficking, or Trafficked? The Story of Mary Jane Veloso. More story-driven and documentary-style than the usual interviews I publish on Currents (and more time-consuming, hence the shortage of other recent material), it was a hugely rewarding piece to work on.

In it, you’ll hear what it was like for the people on the ground working on Mary Jane’s case: the lead-up to her scheduled execution and how close she came to being killed; the reaction to her return to the Philippines; her current legal status and the ongoing work to have her released; and the wider issues Mary Jane’s case highlights, from changes in Indonesia’s death penalty regime, to the exploitation and mistreatment that countless overseas workers continue to face.

For additional information on Mary Jane’s case, I’d also recommend listening to Edre’s interview from last year, where he also discusses his work on the case of Flor Contemplacion, a Filipino overseas worker who who became a household name in the Philippines after she was executed in Singapore in 1995.

Mary Jane’s continued incarceration presents her lawyers with further challenges to overcome, but her story demonstrates how, when it comes to the capital punishment, matters of life or death can hinge on the intersections of poverty and gender, diplomacy, and politics. The last-minute reprieve she received over a decade ago shows how, as long as someone is still alive, there can always be hope.

I met Aurora Chang not long after she’d participated in a demonstration against a pro-US and pro-Israel rally in central Glasgow to celebrate the bombing of Iran by the two countries.

“Unfortunately they outnumbered us by a lot!” she says with a laugh, mildly irked that the pro-Palestine groups hadn’t been able to mobilise more quickly.

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We’d arranged to meet in early March at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, where 26-year-old Aurora is currently doing a Master’s degree. From Taiwan and a supporter of her nation’s independence, she maintains that her nationality forms a core part of her political identity and informs her human rights work.

“Whenever people ask me [how I got involved in activism], I always say that being Taiwanese is the beginning of my political awakening, because it's an inherently political identity to be Taiwanese,” she says.

“All these other liberation movements I’ve been a part of — for Palestine, for Ukraine — I think my support for them is based on my consistent belief in everybody’s right to self-determination, and the people’s right to resistance, and the struggle against imperialism and colonialism.”

Being an Activist in Taiwan

After supporting Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement while studying in the UK, Aurora began working for a Taipei-based NGO working on Tibet for several years. She also started to raise awareness and support for Ukraine after Russia’s invasion in February 2022. More recently, Aurora has become heavily involved in the pro-Palestine cause organising against Israeli violence in Gaza after Hamas’s attacks on October 7th 2023.

“Over the last two or three years, we’ve made some progress. There are definitely more Taiwanese people who are open to changing their minds on Israel and Palestine,” she says.

“But it is still a pretty tricky issue to talk about because of Taiwan’s own position and relationship with the US and Israel,” she adds.

While she supports Taiwanese independence and is critical of US foreign policy, Aurora is also aware of how much her home country relies on US support — particularly in regard to deterring the risk of an invasion by China. “Doing this does make you pretty cynical,” she says, adding that she’s been accused of both being a plant of the US government and a shill for the Chinese Communist Party.

“From the perspective of people who view only American imperialism as being true imperialism, they [think] Taiwan is like a CIA outpost or something. Like a lapdog of the American empire. It makes navigating all of this very difficult.”

These tensions have been compounded by the Trump administration’s recent attacks on Iran and Venezuela, while threatening shows of force against other places ranging from Cuba to Greenland.

“So much of our resources, our government’s resources, are being put into building ties with the US because they are allegedly our supporters in the case of a Chinese invasion,” Aurora says. “But we don’t even know that now, with the US regime being as it is.”

On A Personal Note

In this episode of the Currents podcast, Aurora and I talk about how she got into human rights activism, the pushback she’s faced and how she feels about her work going forward.

But before you dive into the podcast, I’d like to thank everyone who has supported this newsletter for their patience over the last few months.

One of the many things affected by the US and Israel’s attacks on Iran were my flights back to Southeast Asia. I was due to head back at the beginning of the month, but — between flights being rescheduled, then suspended indefinitely, and costs shooting up — these plans have now been postponed indefinitely. I hope to be back in Asia soon, but am still in Scotland for the time being.

I hope to make up for this over the following months. But whatever the future holds, your support for my work and for independent journalism in (and on) Asia remains hugely appreciated — my work wouldn’t be possible without your continued support.

CONTENT WARNING: The interview in this episode contains graphic descriptions of torture, self-harm and attempted suicide.

“We have to overcome all the sufferings, all the pains, to let the young generations of Taiwan to learn [about] the past. So that they can protect themselves in the future.”

This was the message Fred Chin returned to again and again during our interview at Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park, the former detention centre where he was held for part of his 12 years as a political prisoner.

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It’s been over half a century since Fred was detained at Jing-Mei, and almost 40 years since Taiwan transitioned into a democracy from its decades-long rule under martial law — a period known as the White Terror. During this time, which lasted from the 1940s to 1980s, an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 people were executed, while around 140,000 were detained.

Now in his mid-70s, Fred gives tours at the former detention centre; he sees it as his responsibility to inform people both of his experiences and the realities of the state persecution that occurred during this period. “If they didn’t know the past, what happened to us […] those kind of tragedies might reoccur,” he says.

Fred’s story in Taiwan began in the late 1960s, when he moved there from his home in Malaysia to study. Having been English-educated back home, he struggled to adapt to the Mandarin-speaking country and spent much of his time in the US Information Service (USIS) centre in Tainan, where he could study and refer to materials in English (the US had diplomatic ties with Taiwan until 1979).

In 1970 there was a bombing at the US centre, and two people were injured. Under pressure to find the perpetrators (or at least someone who could take the blame), the authorities zeroed in on Fred the following year and took him into custody.

Following his arrest, the then-21-year-old was detained and brutally tortured for weeks. He was then brought before a military tribunal and sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment.

Cautionary Tales from the Past

Fred’s interview is longer than the many of the ones I’ve produced for Currents — and that longer run time comes with a particularly harrowing story. It’s a tough listen, with very little comfort or optimism to be had.

I’m also publishing this at a time when it’s hard to escape headlines indicating that more and more places around the world — perhaps most noticeably in the US — are developing authoritarian tendencies.

But while Fred’s experiences stand as a cautionary tale, one can still find a silver lining.

While he went through hell — as did countless others detained and killed during the White Terror — Fred is still around and able to tell his story. It’s one that should be heard, difficult though it is, to remind us of the need to avoid repeating the horrors of such dark periods of history.

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Tens of thousands of people took to the streets across the Philippines on November 30. Although thousands of police officers were deployed, the protests generally took place without any major incident.

These were the latest large-scale demonstrations in the Trillion Peso March, a nationwide movement that has swept the Philippines over the past few months as people reacted in anger to revelations of widespread corruption and money siphoned from flood control projects.

The real question now is whether or not this mass movement has brought — or will bring — any serious change to the political system and institutions meant to prevent impunity and keep those in power in check.

For more context, you can listen to the previous episodes in this series: the first, where I spoke with rights activists Jean Enriquez and Josua Mata, and the second, my conversation with Erin Tañada, the head of the Liberal Party of the Philippines.

For this concluding episode of the series, I speak with Sylvia Estrada-Claudio, an academic who’s been involved in the movement.

On A Personal Note

As you may have guessed, this will be the final episode of the Currents podcast this year, unless something particularly catastrophic happens.

I’m writing this from Scotland. This the first time I’ve been back to the UK in eight years. I’m also attempting to type this sans glasses (having dropped them on the plane a few days ago, which was clever of me), which essentially means that I’m relying on muscle memory, squinting and guess work, hence the relatively short article. But if I can regain my vision in the next week or so then I plan to do a newsletter wrap of 2025, mostly going over the main stories that have been covered in Currents since its launch in late February.

Until then, this is as good a time as any to wish everyone a happy Christmas — I truly hope everyone has a wonderful time wherever you are, and that 2026 will be a much-needed fresh start.

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Erin Tañada, the leader of the Liberal Party of the Philippines, points to one particular moment that made people sit up and take notice just how extreme the problem of corruption had become.

“I have to thank one DPWH (Department of Public Works and Highways) assistant district engineer,” he says, referring to an incident presented two months ago at the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, an investigative body that examines potential political wrongdoing.

“It was because of his picture of the cash on top of the table that helped visualise to the people how bad corruption is in the country. And that started to anger people.”

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Thousands of Filipinos are now opting to send a very loud and very clear message about their views on corruption. The first iteration of the Trillion Peso March — named after the alleged amount lost to corruption from funds budgeted for urgent flood control measures — saw an estimated 100,000 people taking to the streets across the Philippines on September 21. A follow-up protest is due to take place this Sunday, and organisers hope to exceed that number.

But even if more people demonstrate, one question remains: where will the movement go from here?

While Erin remains cautiously optimistic about the growing social movement, he also believes that more needs to be done at the top to demonstrate accountability. “It just needs political will,” he says. “You imprison all those who are involved [in corruption]. Because unless you throw them to jail and take back what they stole, then people will always say ‘ah, people can get away with stealing money’.”

A History of Politics

Erin is essentially a living archive of modern Philippine political history, having had a front-row seat to many major events. This was largely due to his grandfather, Lorenzo Tañada Sr., colloquially known as the ‘Grand Old Man of Philippine Politics’ — a lawyer who, after working to prosecute political figures who collaborated with the Japanese during the Second World War, entered public service.

“He became a senator for 24 straight years, all the way up until 1971. He retired at the age of 73, not knowing that the year after martial law would be declared,” Erin says of his grandfather, who then took up human rights causes and aligned himself with many who were opposed to the Marcos regime. “He was very active also in the People’s Movement (also known as the EDSA) against Marcos,” Erin adds.

This helped inspire Erin’s political journey, starting out in student politics in the 1980s during the later years of martial law. Following in the footsteps of his father (former Senator and Representative Wigberto Tañada Sr.), Erin was elected to the House of Representatives in 2004.

In 2009, Erin became the principal author of a bill defining and allowing the prosecution of crimes against international law, genocide and crimes against humanity, before becoming Deputy Speaker in 2010. After leaving the House of Representatives three years later and mounting an unsuccessful senatorial bid in 2019, he worked his way up to become acting head of the Liberal Party earlier this year.

Given his knowledge of the inner workings of the Philippine political system and his work on human rights issues, Erin seemed like a logical choice to speak to about what’s going on right now. In this episode of the Currents podcast, we discuss the growing social movement against corruption, the issues that led up to its formation, and the changes he believes are required to allow the system to evolve.

For more on the Trillion Peso March and the current political environment in the Philippines, you can listen to the first part in this series where I speak with Jean Enriquez, Executive Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women – Asia Pacific, and Josua Mata, Secretary General of the labour rights group, SENTRO:

For perspective, 1.9 trillion pesos — the amount the Philippine government has ostensibly spent on flood-control measures over the past 15 years — is equivalent to around 33 billion US dollars. Of this, more than half is alleged to have been siphoned away through corruption.

Since September, following a series of huge nationwide demonstrations dubbed the Trillion Peso March, Filipinos have been regularly taking to the streets en masse to protest the rampant corruption they say continues to plague their country. For many, revelations of just how much public funding has been diverted from crucial flood-prevention and mitigation projects are seen as representative of a deep rot at the heart of Philippine politics.

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An archipelagic nation made up of more than 7,600 islands, the Philippines faces the Pacific Ocean directly to its east, with the next major land masses (North and South America) lying roughly 8,000 miles away. This makes the country acutely vulnerable to extreme weather events that form over the ocean, such as typhoons and tropical storms, which have intensified in recent years due to climate change. These natural disasters hit regularly and severely, causing wide-scale flooding, death, destruction and displacement.

“[Victims of the floods] couldn’t sleep anymore at night whenever there’s a typhoon coming,” says Jean Enriquez, Executive Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women – Asia Pacific. “Because they’re expecting the water to rise very quickly, and they have to ensure that their children, who are often sleeping on the floor — and I’m talking about our grassroots communities, within the informal settlers areas and even the rural areas — they have to pick up their children […] so they won’t be drowned.”

It’s easy to understand why so many Filipinos consider flood control and mitigation as one of the most urgent issues facing their country — and why corruption that stalls or derails this work has become a focal point of public anger.

“There’s lot of projects that have been declared completed when in fact they were never even started. These are the so-called ‘ghost projects’,” says Josua Mata, Secretary General of labour rights group, SENTRO. “You even have a situation where the main watchdog of the government — COA, the Commission on Audit — [in] practice is given one percent of the cut.”

Corruption and Poverty

When Pope Francis visited the Philippines in 2015, he chose his official welcoming ceremony to urge politicians in the overwhelmingly Catholic nation to “reject every form of corruption, which diverts resources from the poor, and to make concerted efforts to ensure the inclusion of every man and woman and child.”

More than 10 years on — and despite this plea from the Church’s highest authority — not a whole lot seems to have changed.

On paper, poverty levels have been falling: according to the Philippine Statistics Authority, the number of Filipinos living below the poverty line dropped to 15.5% last year, down from 18.1% in 2021.

But statistics don’t necessarily reflect on-the-ground realities. One only has to travel around Metro Manila to see the stark juxtaposition between the very wealthy and the ultra-poor. Gated communities and newly built high-rise condominiums are often situated barely a few metres away from slums that lack basic utilities, the two usually separated by imposing brick walls topped with razor wire.

Beyond this, a recent survey found that around half of the population of the Philippines consider themselves to be poor, pointing to broader socioeconomic distress and widening inequality, where millions lack access to essential services. As a commentary piece in the Philippine Daily Inquirer from earlier this year puts it:

The reality of poverty in the Philippines isn’t just reflected in the numbers but also in lived experiences. Multidimensional poverty, which includes a lack of access to basic needs such as food, clean water, education, and health care, affects 18 percent of the global population—a number mirrored in many Filipino communities. For these people, poverty is not just about income; it is about survival in a society where opportunities to improve one’s quality of life are often out of reach.

The Philippines is far from the only country in the Asia-Pacific region grappling with these issues. As such, it’s no surprise that high-profile, obstreperous movements protesting inequality, corruption and government mismanagement elsewhere have resonated deeply with many Filipinos.

In Indonesia, protests intensified in late August after a police vehicle ran over and killed a motorbike-taxi driver. The public anger and mass demonstrations that followed shook the Indonesian political establishment: politicians’ homes were ransacked, government buildings and police stations were burned down, and the government scrambled to show its riled-up citizenry that action was being taken by promising reforms.

The outcome of Nepal’s so-called ‘Gen Z protests’, which erupted shortly after the movement in Indonesia peaked, was even more consequential. On September 8, police fired live rounds into crowds in Kathmandu, killing at least 19 people and wounding dozens more. Demonstrations quickly escalated into a full-blown revolution, and by the following day protesters had stormed and torched the parliament, toppling the government.

While neither country has seen ideal outcomes (flare-ups and state clampdowns have continued in both Indonesia and Nepal), many in the Philippines have been looking to these uprisings for inspiration in their own movement. But the dynamics of Philippine politics present their own unique challenges.

The Political Fall Out

No discussion of current-day political and social developments in the Philippines would be complete without Rodrigo Duterte’s name being mentioned sooner or later.

Duterte, who served as the Philippine president from 2016 to 2022, is currently on trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for crimes against humanity related to his administration’s brutal drug war. Official figures estimate around 6,000 people were killed during his tenure, though some human rights groups place the number upwards of 30,000.

Despite the widespread violence, increased restrictions on civil liberties and multiple allegations of corruption that took place under his rule, Duterte remains a powerful figure in the Philippines — both popular with large swathes of the public, and influential in national politics. Having risen to prominence as mayor of his hometown, Davao City, and then assuming the presidency, he has now established himself as the head of a political dynasty: his daughter, Sara, currently serves as vice president, with his youngest son serving as acting mayor and his grandson as acting vice mayor of Davao City. (Although Rodrigo Duterte is officially the incumbent mayor, this is all-but in name while he awaits trial in Brussels.)

But the prominence of the Dutertes seems to have triggered a rupture with a more old-school political clan: the Marcos family.

After ruling the Philippines under martial law from the 1970s to early 1980s, the infamously despotic and kleptocratic Ferdinand Marcos Sr. was ousted as president in 1986 following a series of mass demonstrations known as the People Power Revolution. The Marcoses fled into exile then, but have since spent decades working vigorously to rehabilitate their image and revive their political fortunes. Their efforts ultimately paid off, culminating in Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. being elected president in 2022.

Over the past year or so, speculation has grown about a major falling out between the Marcoses and the Dutertes, underscored by a series of political developments. In February, the lower house of parliament voted to impeach Sara Duterte over allegations including the misappropriation of funds, and assassination threats against the president and first lady. About a month later, her father was arrested and extradited to Brussels — a move that almost certainly required political approval at the highest level. (However, in July the Supreme Court ruled that the impeachment of the vice president was unconstitutional, preventing Sara Duterte’s case from going to trial.)

Many anti-corruption activists and protest organisers now worry that Duterte loyalists are attempting to hijack the Trillion Peso movement and weaponise the widespread public discontent as a means to topple the Marcos government, thereby re-establishing the Dutertes as the dominant power bloc in Philippine politics.

“At the same time the Marcoses are trying to use this [unrest] to attack their main enemy, which is the Duterte camp,” says Josua. “So that’s where the labour movement, the women’s movement, and all the civil society movements comes into the picture — we need to [encourage people to think] that this is not about protecting Duterte, but this is about advancing people’s rights and interests.”

In This Episode

As the country gears up for the second round of the Trillion Peso March, planned for November 30, this edition of Currents is the first part in a short series examining the developing situation in the Philippines. In this episode, I speak with Jean and Josua — both of whom have been involved in organising recent rallies and demonstrations — about the protests, the issues that have brought people onto the streets, and where it all might lead.

For additional background on some of the topics discussed here, you can listen to my two-part conversation with human rights lawyer, Cathy Alvarez, and the former Commissioner at the Philippines’ Commission on Human Rights, Karen Gomez-Dumpit, on their reactions to the arrest and extradition of Rodrigo Duterte earlier this year (Part 1 and Part 2).

For more information about protest movements which have taken place in other countries, you can listen to my interviews with Andreas Harsono from Human Rights Watch discussing the anti-corruption protests that swept across Indonesia, and with independent journalist Pranaya Rana on the fallout of the Gen Z movement in Nepal.

There’s something quite poetic about Vietnamese journalist-in-exile Trịnh Hữu Long setting up shop at National Chengchi University on the outskirts of Taipei.

“This university used to be a party training centre during the marital law era in Taiwan, so government officials were trained here,” says the pro-democracy activist and magazine editor. “And now they’re hosting us […] This has gone from being a training centre for an authoritarian regime, to hosting a pro-democracy organisation from Vietnam.”

Operating out of a relatively small space, Long’s office doubles as a newsroom and library — the latter housing dozens of books that have been banned in Vietnam.

Long’s journey to Taiwan began after he became disillusioned with the state of the Vietnamese media and government censorship while attempting to set up his own publication.

A graduate of Hanoi Law University, Long established himself as the co-founder and editor of Vietnamese-language magazine Luật Khoa, which covers human rights and legal issues in the country, and The Vietnamese Magazine, an English-language publication focusing on politics. Fearing government reprisals, Long went into exile in 2013, first moving to Manila in the Philippines, then relocating to Taipei four years later.

“Moving to Taiwan was one of the best decisions I have ever made,” he says. “Taiwan offers the best lessons for any democracy movement, and […] for people in authoritarian countries who want to democratise their countries. And I think Taiwan is, in my point of view, the best model of democratisation for Vietnam.”

‘People have changed fundamentally’

It’s a difficult road ahead for Vietnam’s pro-democracy movement, with conservative factions of the ruling Communist Party initiating increasingly harsh clampdowns on free speech and expression over the last decade. “Most prominent movement leaders are in jail now,” says Long.

One of those imprisoned is Phạm Đoan Trang, Long’s colleague and a co-founder of Luật Khoa. Trang was arrested in 2020, and the following year sentenced to nine years for ‘conducting propaganda against the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam’. During her time in prison, her health has reportedly been in serious decline. “We are trying to advocate for her freedom,” Long adds. “But for now the Vietnamese government doesn’t want her to be free yet, so she’s stuck there.”

In the past few years, Long has also witnessed how the government has grown more sophisticated in controlling information and shaping the online narrative. But he points to a population that is becoming more aware of its rights and developing a greater capacity to mobilise.

“20 years ago, the ‘human rights’ term was a taboo; nowadays, people talk about human rights. 10 years ago, going for a protest was a taboo — no one even thought about it; nowadays, no one even questions whether we have the right to protest,” says Long.

“I have witnessed and had conversations with ordinary citizens that make me think that people have changed — fundamentally — in the way they see the government and the way they see the future of Vietnam.”

In this episode

For this episode of the Currents podcast, I speak with Long about press freedom and freedom of expression in Vietnam, as well as his work to preserve literature and writing considered off-limits by the Vietnamese government.

Our conversation had a personal resonance. About 10 years ago, I lived and worked in Ho Chi Minh City as a correspondent for Thomson Reuters, so it was incredibly interesting to hear about the changes that have taken place since I was there.

To explore more of Long’s work, you can access The Vietnamese Magazine and Luật Khoa, and for more context on Trang’s imprisonment, a recent statement from the Committee to Protect Journalists can be found here.

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Two Filipino women in two different countries, two decades apart, both facing the death penalty.

The stories of domestic workers Flor Contemplacion and Mary Jane Veloso, both of whom were sentenced to death, have become ingrained in the Philippine national psyche: one symbolising loss; the other hope.

Their stories continue to resonate widely. Filipino domestic workers who move abroad for years at a time can often find themselves in overwhelming circumstances — fatigued from working long hours with few days off, while suffering culture shocks and sometimes mistreatment, with a lingering homesickness of being separated from their loved ones.

Yet working abroad remains a common practice; for many, it’s the best option to earn a decent wage. Each year, around 172,000 Filipino women leave their home country to work abroad, part of a workforce that contributes to almost 10% of the Philippines’ GDP through remittances.

Flor and Mary Jane’s cases underscore how extreme circumstances can deeply affect Filipinos working abroad, along with their families, friends, and in these particular cases, the legal teams fighting for their lives.

Flor

According to Sister Gerard Fernandez’s account, Flor sang Amazing Grace as she made her way towards the gallows in Singapore’s Changi Prison.

“[Flor] walked peacefully,” says the nun, who served for years as a religious advisor to numerous death row inmates — including during their final hours. “As they walk up to the trap door, I kneel down and I pray as they go up. And then I hear the lever, I know that’s the… that she’s gone.”

Flor had moved to Singapore in 1988, where she found work as a domestic worker. She was arrested in 1991 for the murders of fellow domestic worker 34-year-old Delia Mamaril Maga, and Nicholas Huang, a three-year-old boy in Maga’s care. After two days in custody, Flor confessed to the murders, for which she was convicted and sentenced to death (a sentence later upheld up on appeal).

One of the lawyers who began working on her case in 1995 was Edre Olalia. Now a well-established human rights lawyer and anti-death penalty campaigner, Edre was, at the time, a relatively junior lawyer who was sent to Singapore at the last minute. “We were racing against time, and then somebody has to fly post-haste to Singapore because Flor was about to be hanged,” he says.

“By some happenstance, I was the only one who had my passport ready […] So the head of that law centre said ‘Can you fly and help in this case, and accompany a vital witness that would support our position that Flor was set up, and there was evidence pointing to her innocence?’”

Flor’s legal team claimed that her initial confession, which she later recanted, was made under duress — due to fatigue, and lack of access to legal representation or an interpreter. Many have also questioned the validity of the evidence against Flor, citing an absence of forensic evidence linking her to the murder, along with allegations of mistreatment while she was in custody. (However, it’s worth noting that Singaporean authorities pushed back heavily on allegations on improper conduct, and in her interview with The Singapore Academy of Law in 2019, Sister Gerard says that during their conversations in the weeks leading up to Flor’s execution, Flor confessed to the murders: “I think I’m the only that has the, shall I say, the real details,” Sister Gerard says. “In the end, she did admit what she had done.”)

The case and its various legal challenges began making international headlines. Flor soon became a household name in the Philippines, sparking widespread outrage over her sentencing. Some saw her death sentence as the brutal treatment of a woman from a poor background who had struggled in a foreign country, undeserving of such a fate; others were convinced an innocent woman had been condemned to die at the hands of a foreign state.

“The popular sentiment was overwhelming,” says Edre. “People were holding vigils all over the Philippines, lighting up candles in their houses, all over the country. They don’t know who Flor Contemplacion is, but they were really commiserating with her because the facts that were out showed that there was really doubt as to her guilt.”

Despite their efforts, and huge amounts of support from Filipinos both at home and abroad, Flor was hanged on March 17, 1995. She was 42 years old.

When her body was repatriated to the Philippines, thousands of people took to the streets to mourn her passing. “There was a massive rally,” says Edre. “She was met at the airport, on the tarmac, and there was a motorcade all the way from Manila airport to her home province which was about two hours away.”

Following her execution, then-Philippine president Fidel Ramos came under heavy criticism for not doing enough to intervene in Flor’s case. This seems to have marked a turning point in the approach by successive governments toward foreign policy on the death penalty, with later administrations becoming far more involved in pushing for the rights or appeals of Filipinos on death row abroad.

Mary Jane

Two decades after Flor was hanged in Singapore, Mary Jane Veloso sat in a prison cell in Nusa Kambangan, an island off the coast of Java in Indonesia where executions are carried out, counting down the moments before she was due to face a firing squad.

Also a former domestic worker from the Philippines, Mary Jane had first travelled from the Philippines to Malaysia in 2010 for work. Shortly after arriving, she was told the job arranged for her in Kuala Lumpur had fallen through — but she was assured that employment had been secured for her in Indonesia. Upon arrival in Yogyakarta airport, she was arrested when 2.6 kilograms of heroin were found stitched into the inner lining of her suitcase.

After a seven-day trial — during which she was represented by a court-appointed lawyer and struggled to understand much of the proceedings — Mary Jane was sentenced to death. At the time Indonesia had a moratorium on executions, but capital punishment would be brought back into effect four years later under the presidency of Joko Widodo.

In the lead-up to her scheduled execution in 2015 — this time with Edre serving as lead lawyer from the Philippines — cross-border legal teams scrambled to save her life. “There were a lot of appeals, online and in person; a lot of rallies in Manila and in Jakarta; a lot of press conferences, and statements, and appeals from different groups — lawyers, migrants, women — all over the world,” he says.

Mary Jane and her lawyers maintained she had no knowledge of the drugs, claiming the suitcase containing them had been given to her by the people who had promised her work in Indonesia. The pressure continued to ramp up, coming from activists and legal teams in Indonesia and the Philippines, and mounting scrutiny from the international community.

“It attracted attention,” Edre adds. “Because she was a woman; she was a single mother; she was a poor domestic helper, who was forced to leave her own country just to put food on the table. And the point that she was a victim of unscrupulous drug traffickers also made a lot of impact and attention globally.”

As the hour of her scheduled execution grew closer, Mary Jane said emotional goodbyes to her family. According to Father Charlie Burrows, a priest who counselled prisoners on death row, in what she thought would be their last visit Mary Jane begged for more time with her 12- and six-year-old sons, causing the prison staff to also break into tears. “The warden and attorneys felt real bad about it,” the priest later recounted. “They said to me they didn’t agree with the thing, they just had to do their job, that there should be a moratorium.”

But on the day itself — at almost literally the 11th hour, amidst numerous last minute appeals from legal teams and the Philippine government — Mary Jane was told she’d been spared from the firing squad. Her scheduled execution had been so imminent that newspapers in the Philippines had already gone to print announcing her death, with copies of the Philippine Daily Inquirer carrying the headline ‘Death came before dawn’ on their front page, while tabloid Abante ran with ‘Paalam, Mary Jane’ (paalam meaning ‘goodbye’ or ‘farewell’ in Tagalog).

But other death row prisoners were not so fortunate. Eight men were executed that night, perhaps most famously Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, two Australian citizens and members of the Bali Nine.

In the years that followed, Mary Jane’s case continued to gain publicity in the Philippines while undergoing legal review in Indonesia, largely due to the combined efforts of lawyers and anti-death penalty activists in both countries. Finally, in December 2024 — at the age of 39, after more than 14 years in prison and nine-and-a-half-years after she was due to die — the Indonesian authorities announced that Mary Jane would be repatriated to the Philippines.

She has since been returned to Manila, with photos of her reunion with her family becoming iconic. But despite no official requirements being made following her release from Indonesian custody, Mary Jane remains incarcerated in her home country. Numerous legal appeals and public petitions have been — and continue to be — filed, urging President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr. to grant her a full release.

In this episode

For this episode of the Currents podcast, I speak with Edre about his experiences with the cases of Flor and Mary Jane.

In addition to his work on cases abroad, Edre has spent more than three decades working prolifically on human rights issues in the Philippines, including cases of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.

This work has exposed him to continued threats and scrutiny — including being ‘red-tagged’, a practice in which individuals are falsely labelled as communists, terrorists, or subversives — which became particularly dangerous during the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, when the number of targeted killings of judges and lawyers sharply increased.

In our interview, Edre speaks candidly about his experiences with the devastating loss of Flor, and the years-long fight that eventually secured Mary Jane’s reprieve and return home.

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I can quite vividly recall every time I went to The Projector since first stepping foot in there around 10 years ago.

There was always something about the indie cinema that made it particularly memorable and special for whatever film screening or event I was attending. It stood apart from watching a movie at a multiplex (which would likely be almost identical to every other multiplex), or attending a talk in another drab auditorium. Going to The Projector felt like being in a space with its own distinct character, different from what you’d find anywhere else in Singapore.

I remember having a blast watching newly released blockbusters, like Star Wars: The Force Awakens and the remake of West Side Story, or attentively sitting through low-budget indie films and documentaries, ranging from Untracing the Conspiracy (on Operation Spectrum, where over 20 people were detained without trial in Singapore in 1987), to Kedi, a documentary following the beloved and extremely spoiled street cats of Istanbul.

The venue was also a haven for civil society groups, a free space where people could discuss issues considered off-limits elsewhere in Singapore. I was in the auditorium for the official launch of pro-democracy platform, New Naratif; I sat though panel discussions on free speech (or lack thereof) in Singapore; and I was in the crowd for the release of a report on the state of LGBTQ+ rights in the country. (More recently, The Projector stepped in at the last minute to host the Transformative Justice Collective’s TJFest, after the authorities all but blocked it from going ahead in its original venue).

On The Projector’s social media pages, the managers’ philosophy was summed up simply: “Not your average cinema.” It was an unassuming yet bold claim, but one they always lived up to.

Now, beneath that sentence, there’s another, more solemn, line that reads: 2014–2025. This followed the sad news on August 19, when operators of The Projector announced it would be entering voluntary insolvency, ceasing operations with immediate effect.

Safe Spaces & Places

Generally speaking, Singapore is not always known for its devotion to the flourishing of the arts — particularly the more alternative or far-out variety.

While copious amounts of money have been ploughed into places like the National Gallery Singapore, these often cater to ‘safer’ or less provocative types of art which the establishment can live with. This in part comes down to decades of soft authoritarian control which has often led to outspokenness being — to put it mildly — discouraged, and where self-censorship and fear of reprisals are common. Either through laws and regulations or venue operators getting cold feet, Singapore can be difficult for people to find places where they can openly and publicly speak their mind, especially when it comes to issues considered taboo.

But there’s also the problem of property prices on the small island, which consistently rank among the highest in the world. Over the years, countless small businesses have suffered and closed due to spiralling rent costs — a trend that’s been exacerbated following the Covid-19 pandemic, and something that’s all the more pertinent for those in the arts scenes where, even at the best of times, money is in short supply. The result of this is that renting a venue for things like independent art or civil society events can come with a price-tag far exceeding most people’s means.

In short, this has meant that spaces for artistic and political expression are few and far between in the city-state. And that’s what made The Projector unique.

Despite forays into pop-up or temporary spaces elsewhere, its main home was in Golden Mile Tower, one of the older buildings in Singapore where the aged interior added to the distinctive look and vibe (complete with lifts which often felt like a roll of the dice as to whether they’d even make it up to the fifth floor). It was a venue that leaned into retro cinema aesthetics, with black all-caps lettering over a glowing white backdrop adorning its bar, and walls covered with dozens of posters of decades-old cult movies.

The Projector seemingly catapulted people into an alternative dimension of Singapore — one that very deliberately rejected the sanitised sheen of other well-known landmarks, maintaining an identity that was simultaneously vintage chic and inherently Singaporean. For all the wistful romanticising I’m sure there were things a lot of people thought could’ve been improved about the place. But the fact that it existed in Singapore at all is what made it a gem in the rough.

Spaces like that don’t come along often, and now, the old adage ‘you don’t appreciate what you have until it’s gone’ seems particularly germane. Now, I look back and treasure the memories I had there — and I know I’m not alone. I imagine that just about everyone who’s been to The Projector will have their own unique collage of experiences of the place, and remember what it meant to them.

In this episode

For this episode of the Currents podcast, I speak with Vincent Quek, CEO of independent film distributor Anticipate Pictures (which heavily relied on The Projector to screen indie films), and Becca D’Bus, the host of the drag show RIOT!, where we talk about the loss of The Projector, and what might happen as a result.

In the twists and turns of our conversation (one that’s much more lighthearted than some of the heavier topics I’ve covered in this series), we discuss their initial reactions to the closure, whether spaces like this are inherently fluid, how arts venues in Singapore can grow and evolve from here, and the importance of audiences showing up for all kinds of art — even those they might not be naturally drawn to; as Becca tactfully says: “You don’t know until you try it!”

If you want to read up more about reactions to The Projector’s closure, I’d recommend these articles from writers far more insightful and capable than I am, who share their thoughts, memories and experiences on a place that meant so much to so many people.

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Whether it’s censorship in Singapore, the Duterte administration’s crackdown on the press in the Philippines, or how truth became a casualty of war in Myanmar, those who have lived and worked in authoritarian countries know all too well how declining fact verification and journalistic standards can corrode institutions and distort information. Now — as we’re seeing in the United States — similar trends are beginning to spread in other places, that once championed these ideals as fundamental to democracy.

To change things up a bit, this week’s edition of Currents features a guest column from my father, Lewis Stuart — a retired journalist who spent over 40 years in the media industry — discussing the erosion of core principles in the media, the Internet’s role in undermining truth, and the enduring need for responsible journalism.

The law of unintended consequences has another winner, and real journalism has turned out to be the biggest loser.

The Internet was supposed to liberate us all but, instead, it handed power to whoever shouted loudest and, bizarrely enough, that turned out not to be the traditional, trained news media.

So these days, “facts” come from your mate Joe, something on Facebook, a message on Elon Musk’s poisonous X network, or whatever, and the “MSM” — mainstream media for the non-internet savvy — only gets a look-in as a supposed source of bias and misinformation. The irony of taking a highly partisan, one-sided, openly abusive and often ignorant commentator as a judge of bias and misinformation is, presumably, lost on most people.

That said, the traditional media outlets haven’t helped themselves and in many cases they are not much more credible as a source. Fifty years ago, journalism was a vocation, and almost everybody who went into it had the noble goal of bringing information to the masses on the basis that freedom depends on accurate data. Freedom is still a fragile beast nourished by facts, but the news media increasingly see themselves as a branch of the entertainment industry, where presentation and strong opinions are key, and actually getting things right is secondary.

No wonder public trust has become harder to find, and when the Internet came along, people were already conditioned to the blurring of facts and opinion. The idea that everyone is entitled to their opinion but not to their own facts had already been dumped, as readers and profits became the only things that really mattered.

The Internet then came along to administer the last rites. Back in the heyday of journalism, newspapers were driven by news and maybe made a bit of money on the side. The great press barons of the 20th century — Beaverbrook, Rothermere, and Northcliffe in the UK, Hearst in the US — were themselves steeped in the news media and understood it and its value. They were probably not particularly nice men, but they did understand that their business was about information, not money.

Did the journalists always get it right? Of course not. The important thing is that they tried. Facts were seen as sacred and firmly to be separated from opinion. Even when they got it horribly wrong — and they did — it was usually a cock-up, not a conspiracy.

Then along came Rupert Murdoch and the drive to slash the costs of the news industry. Suddenly profits, not the public good, became the driving force behind most large news organisations. News became what interested the public, not what was in the public interest. Salacious showbiz gossip became the mainstay of many papers, and the old, hard division between news and opinion disappeared, while the agenda was dominated by trivia.

Worse still, the old Hearst line — “news is something somebody doesn’t want printed; all else is advertising” — went by the board. Diving into the nitty-gritty to uncover hidden secrets is expensive; reprinting press releases is cheap. No contest, then.

To be fair, the US held out a bit longer than the UK. Forty years ago, when CNN was barely out of nappies, American journalism was still the gold standard. Driven in large part by an almost religious commitment to the First Amendment of the Constitution, American journalists were widely seen as the benchmark for the serious and committed delivery of accurate news.

This was when the American press was still basking in the glow of Watergate, where fearless probing of the affairs of the rich and powerful ended up bringing down the president. That followed hard on the heels of the Pentagon Papers scandal, where government lies about the Vietnam War were laid bare, and a decade later the feel-good reputation of the US media was secure.

There was more to it, though. At that time in the US, copy editors took control of every word put in front of the public. Apart from making sure the spelling and grammar were correct, they saw their job as independently checking every checkable fact in the copy. Dictionaries and encyclopaedias lived on their desks, other reference books on a library of shelves nearby.

It was perfectly normal to go to the phone book or electoral roll to check that somebody really did live in the street the reporter claimed they did, to check government and company records to make sure somebody’s job title was exactly right, to pore through record books to check the exact date of some event or the exact profit on a named transaction. It was not just about getting things right in general, but doing it with real attention to detail. Elsewhere, sub-editors were a bit more trusting of their reporters but still revelled in their reputation for pedantry.

That was all expensive, though, and as the news industry got taken over by businesses interested in profit more than accuracy, standards dropped and nowadays, across the planet, it is almost standard for the reporter’s work to go out with nobody checking it for typos, grammar, or accuracy.

The worst of it is that in more and more cases the mainstream media are deliberately misleading or flat-out getting their facts wrong. It’s not just Fox News — though they are arguably the modern template — but across the board, facts are being ignored or twisted to suit an agenda, as any front page in the UK’s Daily Mail or Daily Express will testify.

The broadcast medium was late to the party but has now arrived. Fox started that way; now CBS, now part of the Paramount Group, led by Trump ally David Ellison, has not only paid millions for the standard editing of an hour-long interview but appointed Bari Weiss, whose opinions got her into trouble with the New York Times, as head of news. The raft of resignations tells its own story.

It all adds up to the death of real journalism as far as the traditional media go. Newspapers, news websites, radio, and television are all heading down the same path. Those of us who value the old ethos of journalism as a fact-driven vocation have to find other outlets – newsletters, blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels – to keep the flag flying in the hope that one day standards and honesty will return to the profession.

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It’s a cartoonish yet effective variation of the traditional Jolly Roger: atop a black rectangle, two femurs sit crossed behind a skull that’s sporting a red and yellow straw hat — its comically round eyes and wide grin appear playful, yet manic; slightly crazed, yet focused; almost too cute to be sinister… but not totally innocuous either.

Anyone familiar with the manga-turned-anime, One Piece, would recognise the image as the calling-card for the long-running series’ protagonists, the Straw Hat Pirates: a group of underdogs, misfits and outsiders, fighting against overwhelming odds, often facing off against a overly militarised government force — and through their strength of will, skill, savvy and gumption, frequently prevailing (I’m assuming; I’m not that familiar with One Piece, so correct me if I’m wrong, but 21 anime seasons and 112 manga volumes would suggest that Luffy’s crew is doing okay).

20-something years after its debut, the flag has since become the go-to sigil of youth-led movements that are spreading across Asia. “It has come to kind of represent anger, and frustration, and anti-authoritarianism,” says independent journalist, Pranaya Rana. “It’s become kind of a symbol against the establishment.”

The smiling skull in a straw hat has become a staple at protests in Indonesia, the Philippines, and (arguably most dramatically) in Nepal — where a little over two weeks ago the skull and crossbones image was draped across the gates of the country’s parliament as the government building burned in the background.

By the time the flag was placed there, Nepal’s government had already stood down and fled the capital, after a youth-led revolution — which has been dubbed the Gen Z Protests — forced its collapse.

Talkin’ bout a revolution

The build up to this moment had been unfolding for some time. Anger was already brewing over issues like government corruption, mismanagement, and a growing disconnect between the political establishment and large swathes of the populace. This frustration was exacerbated by a high unemployment rate, hovering just above 10%, while many who found work were stuck in extremely low-paying roles with little-to-no job security.

At the same time, Nepali youths were becoming increasingly angered by the opulent lifestyles touted by the children of politicians — seen as the beneficiaries of extreme nepotism at the nation’s expense. “These children, who are also Gen Z or Millennial, appeared to have untold amounts of wealth,” says Pranaya.

“They lead extremely lavish lives. They take vacations in Europe every few months, they carry designer handbags, and shoes, and clothing; they drive around in cars that the ordinary Nepalis could never afford in their entire lives. So the young people […] compared their lives to the lives of these kids, and they thought ‘how come these people get to live like this when the rest of the country is barely making a living?’”

On September 4, the authorities announced a shutdown of over two dozen social media sites. If they had hoped that clamping down on online discussions would quell the growing dissent, their plan backfired massively. Young people not only found ways to bypass the shutdown, but the move also brought more people to the streets in even greater numbers than before.

A similar movement had recently taken place in Indonesia, where protests had spread over issues like the spiralling cost of living, lack of job opportunities and government excess. But if the spark of these protests was lit by social inequality, then the brutality of the police and security services acted as fuel poured on the fire.

In Indonesia, the demonstrations escalated almost overnight after a police armoured car was videoed running over and killing a young GoJek driver who was passing through a protest to make a food delivery. The video went viral, and ignited a wave of violent clashes between demonstrators and the police across the nation, resulting in several deaths and multiple government buildings burned to the ground.

But the outcomes between Indonesia and Nepal were stark: in the former, the government ostensibly agreed to the political reforms demanded by the protesters; in the latter, the protests quickly grew into a revolution that led to the government’s collapse.

Welcome to the Asia Spring

The events of September 8 are likely to become etched into the psyche of a generation in Nepal, after police opened fire on protesters with live rounds. The aftermath left at least 19 people dead, many of them teenagers or young adults.

“What really shocked me, and most of Nepalis, was the was the violence on September 8 […] where a largely peaceful protest was met with such lethal suppression. We had never seen that happen, especially not in Kathmandu,” says Pranaya.

“There were videos of these shootings of these killings that went viral and ignited anger across the country […] Once again, en mass there were thousands of people on the streets, and initially things were subdued even though there was anger. But quickly they gave way to violence. First against the security forces, the Nepal police, who they thought were responsible for shooting these protestors, and then the violence escalated towards the politicians who had been in power for these last two decades.”

The movement spread rapidly, with young people spearheading what quickly became an uprising to dismantle the political establishment. Politicians were attacked on the streets and their homes were ransacked and burned down, following by the burning of the parliament, the supreme court and the presidential residence.

By September 9, prime minister K. P. Sharma Oli, who had been in power on and off for the past decade, resigned and fled the capital — effectively dissolving the sitting government. Since then, the protests have died down while an interim government has taken over.

‘It could go either way’

Friday September 26 marks the two week anniversary since the formation of Nepal’s current government.

With former Supreme Court justice Sushila Karki serving as prime minister (the first woman to hold the role) many of her cabinet picks are relative unknowns; they’re not the usual cut-of-the-mill political elites that Nepalis have come to know and hate, with Pranaya describing them as ‘bureaucrats’ and ‘technocrats’: “They’re ‘cleaner’ than the previous government, the previous ministers that we had,” he says.

“It’s very early to tell how they’re going to do and how they’re going to handle this interim moment. Because this government isn’t elected, it doesn’t have the electoral mandate that an election provides, they’ve basically been picked and appointed by the prime minister, so they don’t have that much legitimacy among the broader public. But they do have the vibe of the Gen Z protestors. So they are kind of working with that mandate.”

The situation in Nepal remains highly volatile and uncertain. The current death toll from the protests stands at 74, with more than 2,000 people injured. While the interim government has promised elections in March next year, what will happen between now and then is rife with uncertainty, and venerable to interference from bad-faith actors at home and abroad.

“It could go either way,” says Pranaya, describing his feelings as somewhere between ‘optimistically pessimistic’ and ‘pessimistically optimistic’. “This is a sensitive and very scary time for us,” he adds. “But we have to remain vigilant, and we have to remain somewhat optimistic. We have to believe that something can be done and something can change.”

For this, he’s looking to the generation that brought about this change in the first place: “We’ve all tried, right? Gen X tried during the 1990 people’s revolution. Then us Millennials, we tried during 2006/2007, the second People’s Movement. Now it’s the turn of the Gen Z — it’s their revolution.”

Further afield, it’s clear that the youth-led protest movements are spreading. As of the time of publication, demonstration organisers in Indonesia say they are closely watching how the government handles its promised reforms, while similar protests continue to grow in the Philippines. The movement has reached the point where some have dubbed these series of protests as the Asia Spring — a term echoing the Arab Spring, the mass uprisings that swept across the Middle East in 2010-2012.

In this episode

For this episode of the Currents podcast, I speak with Pranaya about the situation in Nepal — what led up to this moment, and where it might lead from here.

It’s not often one is able to hear from someone with a front-row seat to an ongoing revolution. While above article is an admittedly brief summation of (some of) the protest’s major developments, for a more detailed and nuanced understanding I urge you to listen to the entire interview — where Pranaya discusses his hopes and fears following the uprising that toppled Nepal’s government.

If you want to learn more about this topic and receive updates about the situation in Nepal as it develops, check out Pranaya’s newsletter, Kalam Weekly. And for more background on the protests in Indonesia, you can listen to my interview with Andreas Harsono, an Indonesia researcher for Human Rights Watch.

Happy sailing!

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With tree-covered mountains and curving rivers creating a basin-like effect around the cities of Chiang Mai, Lampang and Chiang Rai, the northwest of Thailand is one of the most scenic and beautiful places in the country.

But the mountainous region is also rich in financially valuable rare earth minerals, and mining operations are taking more and more of an interest, tearing up the land as they go.

The effects of mining can be seen throughout the region. About a 40-minute drive to the east of Lampang city lies the Mae Moh Mine, an open-pit lignite (a type of coal) mine which began operations in the 1950s. It’s not just the biggest mining site in Thailand, but the largest in all of Southeast Asia. Predictably, the environmental costs have been severe.

“In [the materials released into the atmosphere] there’s toxic gas, there’s heavy metal contamination, and coal is the source of this heavy metal contamination, which is toxic to human health,” says Wora Suk, the Mekong Campaign Director for the environmental and indigenous rights organisation, EarthRights International.

Navigating the murky waters of environmentalism in Thailand is fraught with government inaction, legal and diplomatic complexities, and the ever-looming threat of lawsuits from multi-billion dollar energy firms.

A recent case that exemplifies these issues comes from across the border in Myanmar, currently embroiled in a devastating civil war following the 2021 military coup. Since overthrowing the civilian government and seizing power, the junta has steadily lost ground and control to armed rebel groups throughout the country. The resulting governance vacuum has allowed mining operations — largely supplying Chinese processing plants — to operate with near-total impunity, since there’s a lack of official capacity or will to implement and enforce regulations.

Earlier this year, the environmental impacts of mining operations in Myanmar’s Shan State and Wa State (where centralised control is patchy in the former, and virtually non-existent in the latter) quite literally spilt across the border into Thailand. Thai officials believe that toxic waste from mining plants in Shan State have leaked into rivers running through Thailand, including the Kok River which runs through Chiang Rai, the northernmost city in Thailand (437 kilometres from the Myanmar border), before merging with the Mekong — Southeast Asia’s longest river. When the Department of Pollution Control tested the waters of the Kok, they discovered arsenic levels that were almost four times World Health Organisation limits.

The fallout from the toxic waste has caused significant pushback in Thailand. In June, around 1,500 people rallied in Chiang Rai to pressure their government to take action on the environmental damage being caused. But efforts to get accurate information from or open constructive dialogues with war-torn Myanmar have been riddled with problems — on even the most basic levels.

“We don’t know exactly who the actor is. We know how powerful they are, but we’re still trying to find out who are they exactly, what is the company name, in order to trigger their responsibilities,” says Wora.

It’s just one example of the to-ing and fro-ing between mining and energy firms and environmental action in the region.

Indigenous Rights

The environment is not the only thing affected by the surge in interest from mining and energy firms. Northern Thailand is also home to dozens of indigenous communities — around 1 million people by some estimates — many of whom have seen their traditional homelands transformed by corporations seeking to profit from the region.

“Communities who live on and are relying on natural resources […] are not part of the decision-making about that project, whether or not it’s going to happen,” says Wora. “Like suddenly there’s a project approved and then the communities are excluded from their own lands, and they don’t have a say in compensation negotiations or things like that.”

Indigenous groups in Thailand remain among the poorest in the country. According to the Minority Rights Group, a human rights organisation:

They also have much lower rates of participation in schooling, possibly linked – in addition to poorly equipped and staffed schools – to the almost complete absence of instruction in their mother-tongue in state schools.

Over the past couple of decades there’s been a renewed push to have people from the minority indigenous groups registered as Thai citizens. While around 100,000 have since become registered, estimates of between 100,000 to close to half a million remain technically stateless while living on Thai state land. Many lack access to state services such as healthcare and education, while also facing restrictions on their freedom of movement.

The Thai authorities have done little to address the issues these communities face, often implementing policies that have actively harmed them. In 2014, the government (under former army general Prayut Chan-o-cha) introduced the ‘Return Forest Policy’. Ostensibly a conservation effort, the legislation has also meant that numerous indigenous communities are now considered interlopers on state land. This has led to the confiscation of many of their traditional homelands, and the communities threatened with fines or imprisonment.

One ongoing case that has come to encapsulate the broader situation is currently unfolding in Mae La Noi, a district in the Mae Hong Son province, sandwiched between Chiang Mai and the Myanmar border. The area is home to a large, defunct fluorite mine, which has remained dormant for around 30 years. Though once devastating for the surrounding ecology — with locals falling ill and animals dying from pollutants entering the river — nature has steadily begun to recover since its closure.

But following a wave of Chinese investments in 2021, Universal Mining (a Thai company and the mine’s owner) is now looking to resume operations. Although the company has not yet secured the environmental impact assessment required for it to proceed, experts have warned that since the Royal Forest Department listed the forest as ‘degraded’, the company could be able to bypass the regulations and move ahead with mining the area again.

Fearing another ecological disaster and the possibility of displacement, the local Karen people are now fiercely resisting the mining firm’s plans, resulting in an ongoing David-vs-Goliath-type standoff.

‘This is about stopping the activism on the ground’

For this episode of Currents, I speak with Wora about the work that EarthRights is doing to protect the environment and the rights of indigenous peoples in the region — and the pushback they’ve received from mining and energy firms. One recurring issue the group has faced in recent years is the use of SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) suits: bad faith legal cases filed by powerful organisations or entities (such as large corporations or authoritarian governments), designed to cripple grassroots action.

“This is about stopping the activism on the ground, delaying the activism on the ground,” says Wora. “I’ve seen an increased number of SLAPP suits used as a threat to the communities in the past four years […] Because the industry is growing, I think, and the communities have learned from the past projects they’ve seen from others.”

But the push to protect the environment and indigenous rights appears to be steadily gaining traction.

“There are more wins here and there,” Wora adds. “For example, the fact that we could ask for the court injunction to protect Omkoi [indigenous] communities is one of the wins and it has been three years now so we make sure the communities are safe under these court injunctions.”

In addition to our interview, you can learn more about this topic from the Minority Rights Group and the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), two human rights organisations which are focusing on protecting the rights of indigenous peoples. I’d also highly recommend reading Mongabay’s recent story on the ongoing standoff between the Karen community and Universal Mining in Mae Hong Son province, as referenced earlier in this article.

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For around seven months, protests have been spreading across Indonesia — but in the last few weeks, they’ve intensified.

Massive demonstrations broke out outside of Indonesia’s parliament on August 25, triggered by public anger over what many see as vastly overinflated salaries for politicians. At a time of widespread economic hardship, protesters were further outraged by newly proposed housing allowances for parliamentarians.

“The protesters are basically demanding better livelihood, because they’re facing tax increases,” says Andreas Harsono, an Indonesia researcher for Human Rights Watch. “Meanwhile they’re seeing many high-ranking officials, lawmakers, having increased perks or salaries. That’s why they feel like it is unfair. They perceive that corruption is widespread.”

“What the protestors demand fundamentally is asking for a reform of political parties […] There is a disconnect between legislators and voters.”

But on August 28, things turned deadly after a police armoured car rammed into demonstrators in the capital Jakarta, killing 21-year-old Gojek motorbike driver Affan Kurniawan, after he was caught under the vehicle’s wheels. Videos of the police incident quickly circulated online, and the previously mostly peaceful protests began escalating into violence.

“Because of that video the image of police brutality is being enhanced. Attacks against the police have increased dramatically,” says Andreas.

Since then, protesters have clashed with the police across the country, with numerous buildings — including historic ones, such as the Gedung Negara Grahadi, an iconic late 18th-century construction which stood as the official residence of the governor of East Java — being burned down. The military has been deployed as a means to deal with what is becoming a national crisis, and numerous civil activist groups are rallying against the state.

“The situation right now […] it is scary, it’s very tense,” says Andreas. As of publication, at least 11 people have died in the protests, with dozens more injured and over 1,000 arrested — many of them high school students.

Wealth Inequality in a Uncertain Economy

The cost of living is rising around the world, and Indonesia is no different. Financial pressures have fed into growing anger over politicians’ pay and allowances; in turn, there’s a palpable sense of animosity and anger being directed towards the ruling classes. “58% of certified land titles are only owned by, more or less, 60 families in Indonesia. That is really injustice,” Andreas adds.

Politicians’ pay far exceeds the minimum wage in Indonesia. The salaries of lawmakers have now risen to more than 10 times the minimum wage of the capital Jakarta, already seen as high against the national average. At the same time, economic stagnation and lack of job opportunities have seen thousands of Indonesians working as drivers for ride-sharing apps just to make ends meet.

In effect, Affan — who was making a food delivery at the time of his death at the hands of the authorities — came to symbolise the broader struggles for many in Indonesia: gig economy workers often surviving on paltry wages, being rolled over by the state (in this case, quite literally).

“[It’s] reflective of what happened to many middle class Indonesians,” says Andreas. “They are angry — they’re very angry.”

During this time, the government under President Prabowo Subianto has been scrambling — albeit unsuccessfully — to quell the unrest. In late August, Prabowo cancelled a trip to China to commemorate the anniversary of the end of World War II, after which he released a televised statement to the nation. In it, he described police’s actions as “excessive”, expressed sympathy with Affan’s family and called for calm (he would later meet with Affan’s parents to offer his condolences in person).

Around the same time, the police publicly apologised to the nation, with the officer who drove the vehicle that killed Affan being found guilty of violating police ethical standards and demoted for seven years (though escaping dismissal or prison).

Following a list of demands issued by protest organisers, the Prabowo government has announced that a number of lawmaker privileges — including the controversial housing allowance — will be revoked. But while public apologies and promises of mild reform may have slightly eased tensions, they’ve also been met with scepticism. Protest leaders have dismissed the president’s previous statements as hollow platitudes. Now it comes down to whether the government is willing to not just talk the talk, but walk the walk — and if it isn’t, how badly things might flare up again.

“We are facing a complicated situation now,” says Andreas. “On one side, people perceive the police is doing an excessive use of force: beating protestors, detaining onlookers, more than 1,000 being arrested. On the other side, [some protesters are expressing] their anger by committing violence.”

‘Have a dialogue! Talk to the people’

For this episode of Currents, I speak with Andreas about what’s going on in Indonesia, and where he thinks this might lead. Though providing valuable insights, he’s also quick to note that the ongoing chaos and uncertainty is making any accurate assessment almost impossible at the current time: “The situation is still very fluid. Things are still going on […] we do not know what is happening, even yesterday.”

But Andreas points out that there are clear steps the authorities should take. “The police should [either] charge those detained with credible indictments, [or] if not they should be released immediately.”

But more than anything, as Andreas says, the authorities need to listen to the people on the ground. “I really hope that the government, the police, the military, could have a dialogue with civil society organisations, with the student leaders.”

“Have a dialogue! Talk to the people — talk to the people,” he adds.

For More Information

If you are looking for more independent coverage of the situation, Tempo, the weekly Indonesian magazine, also publishes in English.

I also recommend listening to Reformasi Dispatch with Erin Cook and Kevin O’Rourke, which covers Indonesian politics, policymaking, justice and economics, while Taiwan-based publication New Bloom recently released an interview with Iftitah Sari, a researcher at the Institute for Criminal Justice Reform in Jakarta, to discuss the ongoing situation.

People from around the region have also been using local delivery services like Grab and Gojek to order food for delivery riders in Indonesia, so if you have access to these apps, it’s one way to show solidarity and support.

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If someone asks you to think about the Rohingya people, what would be the first thing that comes to mind?

Images of despair, and of families crammed into refugee camps? Of a people fleeing the threat of death as their homes — and history — burn?

Either would be understandable. The Rohingya people — denied citizenship under Myanmar’s nationality laws — have been the targets of one of the worst acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing to occur in the 21st century. And, as happens, the media coverage only ever crops up when moments of devastation occur.

But in addition to physical violence, one aspect of the genocide of the Rohingya is cultural cleansing — a coordinated effort by the state to erase the history of the Rohingya people in Myanmar. In recent years, misinformation and disinformation campaigns have been prolific in their spread across the country, reinforcing a narrative that the Rohingya are intruders who only recently migrated across the border, and were never proper citizens.

“I think that part of genocide which isn’t talked about very often and isn’t recognised very much, is who people are as a community — about their history, about their heritage, about their culture,” says Greg Constantine, a photographer who’s been documenting the Rohingya people and their stories for around 20 years.

“One of the things that’s been done — very methodically by the Burmese government over all these decades — is to do everything it can to basically erase the history and the acknowledgement of the Rohingya community being a people from Burma, who have contributed to Burma, and who have participated in the development of that country over all those decades.”

Once upon a time

Greg, who’s originally from the US, alludes to a major shift in his life around his late-20s/early-30s, whereupon a brief dalliance with writing convinced him that photography was his path to artistic expression. He started documenting stateless peoples in the mid-2000s, traveling to various countries around the world. The Rohingya were among the first he covered in his series in 2006.

A bit over 10 years later in 2017, the Myanmar military ramped up its efforts to remove the Rohingya from state territory. The genocide perpetrated by state actors resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and millions displaced, many of whom fled across the border to Bangladesh, primarily to Cox’s Bazaar.

It was around this time that the world woke up to the persecution the Rohingya had been facing. Coverage of their plight made headlines around the world, and stories of the horrors they’d experienced were in fast supply. Greg, who’d been covering the largely overlooked Rohingya community, now had a front row seat to a global story.

Greg’s documentation of the persecution of the Rohingya was exhibited in various places — including the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. But after the DC exhibition, he says he took some time to reflect on the narrative surrounding the Rohingya — and how to disrupt that.

The result was Ek Khaale, a Rohingya expression meaning ‘once upon a time’. It could be considered the culmination of Greg’s work attempting to push back against itself, and other narratives that portray the Rohingya solely as victims.

“I wanted to do something different that would challenge my own body of work,” he says. “For me, if I’m going to continue to keep working on this story, what could I do that’s completely different from what I’ve done before? Because I could go into Bangladesh, and keep making pictures of this community of being the victims — of suffering, the desperation — of being all these labels that’ve been imposed upon them.

“I came to the decision that [the] work wasn’t doing enough to disrupt the trajectory of the narrative that’s been told of the Rohingya all these years. And I felt like, okay, if I want to do something different, I need to do something that’ll disrupt this; it’s going to disrupt not only me, as a photographer and the work I produce, but that same old narrative that everyone keeps pushing about this community.”

Changing the narrative

In this episode of Currents, I speak with Greg about his work documenting stateless peoples, the Rohingya, the current situation in Myanmar, and how he hopes Ek Khaale can shift perspectives.

Ek Khaale is currently on display in Bangladesh, following on from its maiden exhibition in northern Thailand last month. The project, which has been running for around four years, is the result of a collaborative effort that wouldn’t have been possible without the contributions of the Rohingya people. Greg talks passionately about how continually surprised and moved he has been by the extent of the salvaged historical records — preserved despite ongoing persecution and repeated displacement.

“It’s a privilege to be part of that process,” he says.

“When you really think about it, this project is not just about presenting a whole new visual portrait of the Rohingya community [...] it’s a vehicle of resistance. Every single contribution — from one singular photograph, to a document, to a whole portfolio of documents by a Rohingya individual or a Rohingya family — the fact is, that contribution is a resistance against the labels that have been imposed upon them. It’s a resistance against the narrative that the Burmese authorities have spread over all these years. And it’s an act of resistance against the visual identity that has been created, that represents them, by other people.”

Ek Khaale will be on display at BRAC University’s Exhibition Hall in Dhaka, Bangladesh from August 17-28 . You can also view the visual restoration and story of the Rohingya on the Ek Khaale website.

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From military bans and bathroom bills to debates on who can compete in which sports — despite making up only a tiny fraction of the population, trans people have become the go-to scapegoats in (often bad faith) political and cultural debates.

Many cisgender politicians, celebrities and other public figures (particularly in the US and UK) have jumped on the bandwagon, leveraging the trans rights debate for clout — often at the expense of the rights, safety and dignity of actual trans people.

In the Indo-Pacific region, the situation remains complex. For instance, while trans people have more visibility and experience less prejudice in Thailand, the issue of trans rights in Indonesia and Malaysia is much more contentious.

To its credit, Singapore has so far avoided going down any populist rabbit holes when it comes to the rights of trans people. But whether this will remain the case is uncertain, with global trends targeting trans people feeling like a ‘sword of Damocles’ hanging over the heads of many in Singapore’s community.

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried,” says Ellis Ng, a journalist and social media and editorial lead for rights group, TransgenderSG. “I’m extremely worried.”

Gender & sex in the city-state

Considering the sanitised, heteronormative sheen of modern-day Singapore, it might come as a surprise to learn that the country once had a vibrant and visible trans community. This was particularly true on Bugis Street (barely a couple of miles from central Singapore), known around the region as one of the hangout spots for members of the trans community from the 1950s until the area underwent significant gentrification in the 1980s.

Singapore was also a pioneer in trans healthcare. Gender-affirming treatment for the trans community was legalised in the 1970s, and the first gender reassignment surgery in Asia was performed at Kandang Kerbau Hospital in 1971.

This isn’t to say that everything has been a bed of roses for the LGBTQ+ community in the socially conservative nation. Far from it.

Prudish legacies of British colonialism still hover in the cultural ether in Singapore, most famously Section 377A, a colonial-era law which prohibited sex between men; although it had not been enforced for years, Singapore’s government continued to keep statute on the books until 2023, largely due to pressure from influential conservative religious groups. Same-sex marriage is still illegal, same-sex couples face multiple difficulties when it comes to adoption, and LGBTQ+ representation in the media is heavily policed or restricted.

The country’s trans community has, for now, not experienced the same levels of prejudice and discrimination seen in other parts of the world. Politicians in Singapore have not pounced on the mere existence of trans youths as a reason to restrict sports participation in schools, and supposed feminists do not regularly harangue trans people as a ‘threat to womanhood’.

Instead, Singapore’s trans community faces discrimination at a far more bureaucratic level, often grappling with numerous institutional barriers that prevent them from living as their fullest selves.

Financial issues are often at the forefront. As Ellis notes: “The path to being ourselves is expensive.”

Unemployment remains disproportionately high for Singapore’s trans community — something particularly harmful in one of the most expensive countries in the world. Trans people under the age of 21 often struggle to properly access gender affirming care, which means that people are often forced to transition later in life.

Singapore’s infamous technocracy has also presented barriers for trans people, notably in public housing, a sector rooted in government efforts to promote traditional ‘nuclear family’ models.

In 2017, the Housing Development Board refused to hand over the keys to a flat to a young couple because one partner had officially transitioned, turning their state-approved, ‘heterosexual’ marriage into a same-sex union. A typically efficient system ground to a halt as bureaucrats — unwilling to stray from the official prioritisation of straight couples — figured out what to do.

Ultimately, the Registry of Marriages unilaterally voided their marriage, and the couple were only allowed to purchase a flat half the size of the one they’d initially signed up for — and with less government subsidy than they would have enjoyed as a straight couple.

#FixSchoolsNotStudents

Many of the issues facing Singapore’s tiny trans community often go under the radar, which made the events of January 2021 even more exceptional.

In early 2021, Ashlee, a trans student at a junior college, publicly shared her struggles with her school and the education ministry in a Reddit post. The issues she raised resonated with many young LGBTQ+ Singaporeans, many recognising the systemic restrictions, boundaries and limitations queer youth have had to navigate in a conservative system. The post went viral and prompted #FixSchoolsNotStudents, a rare protest outside the Ministry of Education’s headquarters.

The demonstration didn’t last long. The protestors were barely able to assemble and hold up their placards before plainclothes police officers appeared. Uniformed police were on the scene soon after, demanding the remaining three protesters (the other two had left right after posing for some photos) disperse; when they refused, their signs were confiscated while they were arrested and ushered into police vans.

In most other countries, five people standing peacefully with a few signs in front of a government building for about 20 minutes would barely attract any notice, let alone trigger such swift police action. But Singapore is not like other countries, and with laws restricting or banning most public assemblies, even such a tiny protest made a statement that got people talking, especially on social media.

A few days later, then-Education Minister (now Prime Minister) Lawrence Wong addressed the issue in parliament. He affirmed the government’s commitment to all students, including trans students. But he also issued a warning: “We should not import these ‘culture wars’ into Singapore.”

For trans rights supporters, that remark rang hollow — or even revisionist. “I wouldn’t call him ignorant of history,” says Ellis. “But when you say we’re a ‘Western’ thing, then it really does ignore the history trans people have had here.

“We’ve been here. We’ve always been here. And you can’t really ignore that.”

Transgender Stories

For this episode of Currents, I spoke to Ellis about the history of the trans community in Singapore, the current state of trans rights, and what her main concerns for the future are.

On August 16th, TransgenderSG are hosting Transgender Stories, an event where four trans Singaporeans talk about issues like coming out, their time at school, and the realities of their work and daily lives. TransgenderSG’s site also offers a wealth of resources for people in Singapore who want to know more about the realities of transitioning, from statistics to where to look for support for surgeries and social transitioning.

For more organisations offering support for those currently or thinking about transitioning, Transbefrienders offers peer support services for transgender youth in Singapore, and The T Project is “Singapore’s first and only social service for the transgender community”.

In societies where the notion of retributive justice has been entrenched and normalised, prison reform or anti-death penalty activists are often sneered at. “Talk is cheap,” people could say. “Just you wait until someone in your family becomes a victim.”

Hypotheticals aside, it’s impossible to predict how any one of us would react if we were victims of brutal violence. We can only hope we’d never have to experience such a thing. But for one Filipino actress, her beliefs in restorative justice were put to the test in one of the most traumatic and painful ways imaginable.

Cherry Pie Picache, usually known as Pie, is one of the Philippines’s most celebrated actresses. During her 35-year career on the stage and screen, she hasn’t confined herself to the entertainment industry: she’s leveraged her platform and popularity to advocate for the end of harsh punishments, such as the death penalty, and in favour of restorative justice — an approach aimed at repairing harms done to victims, perpetrators and communities instead of inflicting pain and exacting revenge.

But when her 75-year-old mother, Zenaida Sison, was brutally murdered in 2014 by her own personal assistant — Michael Flores, who was 29 at the time — it shook Pie’s beliefs and convictions.

In what appeared to be an attempted robbery, Flores (while under the influence of methamphetamine) broke into Zenaida’s home in the early hours of the morning. After she woke up and began calling for help, he stabbed her 36 times with a kitchen knife and a piece of wood broken off from a door.

Pie and her driver discovered Zenaida’s body a short while later. A manhunt ensued and Flores was arrested after a few weeks. His trial lasted about a year, and, after confessing to the murder, he was convicted and sentenced to no less than 40 years in prison.

‘I was praying that I would be able to do it’

Before her mother’s murder, such types of violence had seemed distant and abstract to Pie — the stuff of fiction or sensationalist news headlines, not real life. “I really couldn’t believe that it could happen,” she says. “We stayed in a very good area. We were comfortable and we were protected.”

The shock and trauma of losing her mother in such a way forced Pie to put a pause on her advocacy work with the Catholic Church’s Episcopal Commission on Prison Pastoral Care. “Losing a loved one, losing your mother is painful enough, but losing her the way we lost her…” she says. “I must say that I wavered for a year or two. I stopped helping, I stayed away from the [church] ministry.”

“The first thing that came into my mind was that he had to pay for it — vengeance, [for] revenge.” These instincts contradicted all the principles she’d held dear, and she had to rely heavily on her faith to help her through the grief and anger. Over time, though, she began to come back to herself and her ideals.

Three years later, the opportunity arose for her to put both her faith and her belief in restorative justice into practice. She was presented with the idea of appearing in a documentary in which she would meet her mother’s killer face-to-face in Manila’s New Bilibid Prison.

Would she truly be able to forgive him?

The end result was the 2019 ABS-CBN News documentary Radical Love, which chronicled Pie’s journey to meeting Flores. She credits her faith in God as the reason she was able to go ahead with this.

“When I finally decided to make the documentary, and when it finally happened; going there, and travelling towards meeting him, even when I was walking, I was praying to God. I was really praying, and asking for the Holy Spirit to really grant me the grace to really forgive him. Because I wasn’t sure, I didn’t know,” she says.

“To come face to face with him after three years, I didn’t know what my reaction was going to be. I was even thinking, depending on how he would react on seeing me too after three years, maybe I would change my mind. So I was really praying that I could be able to do it — to really forgive him.”

Some wounds never fully heal

Six years after Radical Love first aired, I met Pie at a restaurant in Quezon City in Metro Manila, only a few blocks from where she grew up.

It was an impromptu meeting, arranged only a couple of days before by Karen Gomez-Dumpit, the former Commissioner for the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines, and facilitated by Gerry Bernabe from the Catholics Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (you can listen to my interviews with Gerry here, and Karen here). Throughout my time in Manila, Karen had repeatedly told me to meet Pie and listen to her story.

Predictably, ours was an emotionally charged conversation, during which Pie spoke in detail about her advocacy work, her faith and forgiveness. It wasn’t just an incredible story, but one that also provoked a lot of questions: not just about how rarely we hear of such acts of forgiveness, but also about the reasons one might choose to do this — and how many people could do the same.

Did forgiving her mother’s murderer help her, in part, heal? “Yes,” Pie said, “but that came later.” Her decision to go through this ordeal, she says, hadn’t been motivated by a desire for catharsis or soul-cleansing — she’d wanted to do it because she felt that her faith was giving her strength to address the the horrific act which had upended her life. It was clear during our conversation that the pain is still fresh is many ways; wounds like this almost never fully heal. But Pie maintains that meeting and forgiving Flores is a powerful anodyne to her anger and sorrow.

“Let’s say I let my emotions take over me before, I could even ask someone to kill him inside the prison or get back at him, or even letting him rot in jail, and not wishing him the reformation that he needs,” says Pie.

“If that happened, would that heal me? Would I be satisfied with that? No, I don’t think so, because what will satisfy me is knowing the truth, and knowing that my assailant truly, honestly, sincerely repents.”

Several weeks after our meeting, I still reflect on our conversation. I wonder how Pie was fully — in her heart — able to forgive someone who had caused such heartache and trauma to her and her loved ones; I still wonder about the strength of character that’s required to accept what has happened, and not just work towards healing yourself, but for caring for the person who caused the pain in the first place.

I don’t know if I would be able to do that. I don’t think many of us could.

In addition to this week’s podcast, you can watch the Radical Love in its entirety here:

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It’s a common sight in Philippine jails: dozens of inmates lying on the floor of a cell clearly far too small to house their numbers, crammed together while sleeping (or at least trying to) on, if they’re lucky, old sheets or mats.

“They take shifts,” says Gerry Bernabe, the Executive Assistant for the Episcopal Commission on Prison Pastoral Care (ECPPC), which is part of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines. “Since there’s no space, then one group of inmates sleeps from this time to this time, then they wake up, then the next batch sleeps, [and it goes on] like that.”

Last year, pre-trail jails in the Philippines reported an overall occupancy rate of 322 percent (down from 365 per cent in 2023). Gerry estimates that some carceral facilities have congestion rates of around 500 percent. Statistics released by the Bureau of Corrections in 2022 revealed that New Bilibid Prison (the Philippines’ national penitentiary in Metro Manila) had an inmate population of 29,204, even though its intended capacity is 6,345.

In these conditions — which Gerry describes as “really not fit for human habitation” — inmates are sustained on cheap, poor quality food and the risk of disease outbreaks is high. Corruption in Philippine prisons is a widespread, systemic problem — drugs and other contraband flow into compounds “through the front door”, all while countless numbers of persons deprived of liberty (PDLs) struggle to access legal counsel.

These are just some of the colossal issues the ECPPC is grappling with.

‘It will take a long time’

In a country where almost 80 percent of the population identify as Catholic, the Catholic Church’s words carry a lot of weight. Over the years, cardinals and bishops have been instrumental in movements for democracy, for the abolition of the death penalty and resistance to Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on drugs.

In this vein, the ECPPC’s work, while informed by their faith, has not been about proselytising. Instead, they prioritise improving conditions in jails and prisons, as well as rehabilitation and restorative justice. This can often come in the form of paralegal work: offering legal support to prisoners’ families and assisting lawyers (often public defenders) overwhelmed by the number of cases on their docket.

As Gerry notes, it’s not a numbers game obsessed with converting as many prisoners to the faith as possible. Instead, the focus is on improving the lives and conditions of a severely marginalised and stigmatised group of people so they can be supported in their efforts to better themselves.

“A person is an integral being, it’s not only composed of a soul,” he says. “If you want to rehabilitate a so-called criminal, you should target his whole being. Not only his mind, not only his soul, but the entire body. You cannot preach rehabilitation to him if his stomach is empty, if his basic needs are not met. So you have to do it on a holistic basis.”

It’s brutal, exhausting, and often traumatising work, seemingly without end — the Philippines falls far short of the UN’s Nelson Mandela Rules, which stipulate basic standards for incarcerated persons. “Probably it will take a long time before we come up to the international standards which is required under international law,” Gerry adds.

In this episode

In this episode of the Currents podcast, Gerry talks about the tough reality of working to help and rehabilitate prisoners in the system that’s heavily stacked against them. In our conversation, we discuss prison conditions in the Philippines, how his faith informs his work, and why he continues to work with prisoners and campaign for the international abolition of the death penalty.

For more on this topic, I also recently interviewed Art Pangilinan, a former death row inmate who was released in January after almost 31 years in prison. During his time behind bars, Art’s family — particularly his wife, Dolly, who was also interviewed — diligently supported him and worked for his release, while he turned his life around by finding religion and becoming a trained artist, as part of an arts programme introduced to help inmates express themselves.

You can listen to my conversation with Art and Dolly here:

In 1967, just before 8 o’clock in the morning on February 3rd, Ronald Ryan drank a small shot of whisky and was escorted into Pentridge Prison’s execution chambers in the Australian state of Victoria. The 41-year-old convicted murderer was led to the gallows, said to the executioner, “God bless you, please make it quick”, and had a noose placed around his neck. Moments later, the trapdoor was released from under his feet and he was hanged to death.

At the same time his execution was being carried out, anti-death penalty campaigners and supporters of Ryan — who had always maintained his innocence — observed a three-minute silence across Australia. In Pentridge Prison, inmates staged a sit-in and refused to leave their cells in protest over the state-sanctioned killing.

Despite calls for death sentences for serious crimes coming from leading Australian politicians in the 60s (including from then-Victoria premier Henry Bolte, who had led an intense but unsuccessful campaign to execute convicted murderer Robert Tait in 1962), national public opinion had demonstrably turned against the death penalty. Ryan was the last person executed in Australia, and capital punishment was fully abolished in all states by 1985.

30 years later, the death penalty caused outrage in the country again, after two young Australian men — Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, accused of being ringleaders of the the Bali Nine — were condemned to die in Indonesia after being convicted of attempted drug smuggling. Despite petitions from the Australian government to spare their lives and widespread outcry from the Australian public, the pair were executed by firing squad in April 2015.

The Bali Nine case and deaths of Chan and Sukumaran triggered a clear societal and political shift, leading to Australia becoming an active leader in the global movement for the abolition of the death penalty.

Introspection and self-reflection

Opposition to the death penalty in Australia remains strong — both at societal and political levels — and recent polls have shown that 69% of Australians oppose capital punishment, even for murder.

Generally speaking, Aussies really dislike the death penalty.

But this vehement opposition to capital punishment has led to further complications in the murkier waters of geopolitics and international police cooperation. Despite abolishing the death penalty domestically, the Australian authorities continue to aid and assist police in retentionist countries, sometimes in criminal investigations which could lead to death sentences.

Take the Bali Nine case: in 2006, after finding out that nine Australian citizens were attempting to smuggle illegal narcotics on a flight from Bali to Australia, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) tipped off the Indonesian authorities, leading to the arrest and conviction of the would-be drug couriers. About a decade later, two of the nine were taken outside an Indonesian prison and shot — deaths many in Australia saw the AFP as being complicit in.

In the years since, the AFP has cooperated in similar ways with numerous other countries, some with even harsher drug laws or under authoritarian governments notorious for their human rights abuses. “The AFP, since the military junta has been in power in Myanmar (in 2021), has responded to over 290 information requests, I believe on drug trafficking,” says Elizabeth Wood, CEO of the Australia-based abolitionist group the Capital Punishment Justice Project (CPJP).

“We know that Myanmar has the mandatory death penalty for some drug offences, so it doesn’t seem unreasonable to say that even if it’s at the very low end of some pretty minor information, then that ultimately could lead to the case where someone is arrested and face the death penalty.”

“I remember having conversations with representatives from the AFP saying ‘we want this loop to be closed’,” adds Sara Kowal, Director of Eleos Justice at Monash University’s Law department and Vice-President of CPJP. “It’s about why are we participating? Why is the Australian Federal Police giving information that could result in anyone being executed. They do have guidelines, and they would say that they’re following the guidelines, but the guidelines need to be reviewed.”

Cases such as these have led to considerable introspection as to what, exactly, Australia’s role should be with regard to the death penalty — not just domestically, but also internationally.

A leading voice on abolition

In 2018, Australia introduced a bipartisan strategy to end capital punishment. Its statement of intent was unambiguous:

‘Australia opposes the death penalty in all circumstances for all people. We support the universal abolition of the death penalty and are committed to pursuing this goal through all the avenues available to us.’

“Part of that policy was to say, ‘Well, we are the best placed in the Asia-Pacific region to be a leading voice on abolition’,” says Sara.

Globally, there’s an ongoing shift away from the death penalty. More and more countries are either fully abolishing state-sanctioned killings or holding back from carrying out executions even if capital punishment remains on the books. This has even been noticeable in drug-averse nations across Southeast Asia: capital punishment has been fully abolished in the Philippines and Cambodia, while Malaysia scrapped the mandatory death penalty in 2023, bringing its death row population from over 1,200 people to just 140.

Despite this worldwide trend, a number of retentionist countries have doubled down on capital punishment. Singapore, for instance, continues to insist that mandatory death sentences — even for non-violent offences such as drug trafficking — are instrumental in maintaining public safety and national security. Iran has ramped up its use of state-sanctioned killings, often in an attempt to quash political dissent. Data on executions in countries like China and Vietnam is scarce, but it’s estimated that the annual number of executions in the former could number in the thousands.

Accusations of foreign interference and the impositions of western values are regularly trotted out by retentionist nations to deflect international criticism. In some cases, they also point fingers at those applying international pressure, reminding their critics that their hands aren’t completely clean either, and while this ‘whataboutism’ has long been a staple of bad faith arguments, it can sometimes work because there is some truth behind the criticism. A case in point is Australia’s poor human rights record when it comes to its treatment of indigenous people and refugees, with accountability and change required in those areas. But anti-death penalty activists argue that this doesn’t — and shouldn’t — invalidate the Australian government’s position on capital punishment.

“We would never say that Australia has a perfect human rights practice,” says Elizabeth. “I guess in some ways the abolition of the death penalty is somewhat safe ground for Australia to take a really principled stand. I wouldn’t want it to distract from the areas where Australia can improve its human rights practices, but I also wouldn’t want to throw that out and say the stance on the death penalty is irrelevant or diminished because of how our government acts in other ways.

“You take the wins where you can. This is something where Australia has taken a really strong stance, and it appears we’ll continue to do so.”

These sentiments are echoed by Sara, who emphasises the importance of cross-border cooperation among anti-death penalty activists. Although defensive officials from retentionist states might fling around accusations of foreign meddling, the fact remains that there are human rights defenders on the ground in those countries who need, and want, the support and solidarity from groups like CPJP. “What’s the option? To do nothing? That’s not an option,” she says. “You’re only ever going to have effective campaigning if you’re led by the experts and the people living in those circumstances.”

‘You take the wins where you can’

Anti-death penalty work is often Sisyphean in nature, both for those in retentionist countries, and for others campaigning internationally. But there have been instances where international and domestic pressure combined have saved lives.

Indonesia — which last staged a round of executions in 2016 — seems to have put a hold on carrying out death sentences. While no official reason has been given (there’s nothing to definitively indicate that executions couldn’t suddenly resume) some abolitionists speculate that this is due to the international fallout from the executions of Chan and Sukumaran in 2015.

Another indication that Indonesia might be pulling away from the death penalty is the recent repatriation of Mary Jane Veloso, a Filipino woman and former domestic worker who was convicted of drug smuggling in 2010.

Veloso had been arrested in Indonesia after airport security discovered 2.6kg of heroine stitched into the inner lining of her luggage; she was sentenced to death the same year, but adamantly maintained her innocence throughout her time incarcerated. “She’s [widely] recognised as someone who’s been the victim of human trafficking,” says Sara. “She meets the UN definition; she meets the ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) definition. So the fact [she was] kept on death row for that length of time — or for any length of time — is appalling.”

Veloso barely escaped the firing squad in April 2015. She’d originally been scheduled to be executed alongside Chan and Sukumaran, but was pulled out of line at the last minute. “I met a social worker who was with her family that night on the island, and her family had to hear the [gunshots], and they weren’t told until several hours afterwards that their mum had been pulled off death row,” Sara says.

“That story was an amazing result of incredible advocacy and lawyering from lawyers in the Philippines and in Indonesia, and with huge public protests in the Philippines to really campaign for Mary Jane.”

Over the years, Veloso found herself at the centre of bilateral discussions between the Indonesian and the Philippine governments, while activists in both countries continued to fight for her case. After years of political manoeuvring and campaigning, Veloso was repatriated in 2024. Though still in prison in the Philippines, local authorities have said her case will be thoroughly reviewed, and many believe that she might finally be released soon. For now, she’s still waiting to testify against the recruiters who allegedly trafficked her.

In previous editions

In this latest episode of the Currents podcast, Elizabeth and Sara talked about these issues and more, giving us a glimpse at the work that CPJP has been doing over the years. This follows on from the first half of our interview, where they discussed how they became involved in the anti-death penalty movement, the often bizarre nature of the implementation of capital punishment, and some of the moments which have deeply influenced their work:

This week, I also published my interview with Art Pangilinan, a former death row inmate who spent almost 31 years in prison in the Philippines, and his wife Dolly.

While Art was in prison, Dolly — a housewife and single mother — became heavily involved in the Philippine anti-death penalty movement. She began lobbying politicians after joining an organisation made up of families of death row prisoners, eventually becoming its president. Art, meanwhile, would go onto turn his life around, finding religion and (after his sentence was commuted from death to 40 years imprisonment) training to become a painter.

Both episodes offer incredible insights into ways the death penalty affects lives: Art and Dolly’s story showing the impact it can have on the families of death row inmates, Elizabeth and Sara’s interview offering an in-depth discussion on the realities of anti-death penalty activism and how it affects those involved in working for global abolition.

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“As of now, we’re happy together”, says Dolores L. Pangilinan, who usually goes by Dolly. It’s a simple and understated way of summing up the journey she and her husband have been on over the previous three decades.

In January 2025, Dolly’s husband, Arturo de Guzman Pangilinan — known to friends and family as Art — walked out of prison a free man after almost 31 years incarcerated in the Philippines.

Art was arrested in 1994 for kidnapping for ransom. He doesn’t dwell on details. “I did it, I committed the crime,” he says matter-of-factly, a twinge of regret in his voice. Now a softly-spoken man in his mid-60s, he reflects on what he’s been through: from being arrested and sentenced to death, to finding God, learning how to paint and eventually regaining his freedom.

In turn, Dolly — who affectionately calls Art by the pet name “Papa” — tells the story of how she went from a humble housewife to a single mother and anti-death penalty activist.

Life on death row

In 1987, the Philippines became the first Asian country to abolish the death penalty. The new Constitution, drafted after the People Power Movement ended the rule of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., prohibited the use of capital punishment but allowed for the possibility of Congress reinstating it for “heinous crimes” if there were “compelling reasons”.

In 1993, capital punishment was reintroduced under the administration of President Fidel V. Ramos. Executions, carried out by lethal injection, resumed six years later under President Joseph Estrada.

Art was sentenced to death in 1998. His parents, who don’t speak English, couldn’t understand what had been said in court. It fell to Dolly, herself struggling to come to terms with the sentence, to explain to her in-laws that Art was going to be on death row. And then there was the gut-wrenching task of breaking the news to the children: at the time, their son was 10 years old, their daughter only five.

Art says he was scheduled for lethal injection nine times; it was only due to his lawyer’s court appeals that he avoided execution. He’d seen how other prisoners had been taken away for execution; how they couldn’t walk to the execution chamber themselves.

The night before his first scheduled execution, he lay down and prayed to God: “Please, take me now, because I cannot go there [for] lethal injection […] Take me now; if You don’t get me tonight, I will not be put to death and You will use me.”

Outside prison, Dolly became active in the anti-death penalty movement — not just advocating for her husband but also for other death row inmates. She joined an organisation made up of families of death row prisoners, consistently showing up to meetings and activities. When the former president stepped down, Dolly took up the mantle to lead the group.

In April 2006, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo commuted the death sentences of over 1,200 death row prisoners — including Art. A couple of months later, the Philippines abolished the death penalty for the second time. Art’s death sentence was changed to reclusión perpetua, a sentence of imprisonment for at least 20 years and one day to a maximum of 40 years.

‘My wife and me support life’

As his years in prison went on, Art began training to be a painter, studying and refining his craft for five years. He credits his religious faith and his family for getting him through this time: “The 30 years and 10 months I was in prison, they supported me.”

“My family, my daughter, my son — they gave me material for painting while I was studying to be an artist. That’s why I graduated.”

Five months after his release, Art is still readjusting to life outside prison. He worries about not living up to his family’s expectations and continues to feel overwhelmed in everyday situations — though he says he always looks to Dolly for support during such times.

Art’s paintings were on show at the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network’s (ADPAN) regional conference in Manila in June. Despite the trauma of everything they’ve been through, Art and Dolly remain active in the anti-death penalty movement. Their continued presence and efforts are important; over the years, there have been attempts to bring the death penalty back in the Philippines. It’s a reminder that, even in abolitionist states, vigilance is necessary. “I feel — when I was on death row — God doesn’t like the death penalty,” Art says.

“God likes the reformation of the inmates. My wife and me […] support life, that’s why we are here.”

Art and Dolly’s story — which spans decades of unimaginable hardships — is one of unshakeable love and commitment. I’ve been working as a journalist for over a decade, and this interview was one of the most emotional I’ve ever conducted.

“I thank Papa that he changed his life, especially when God gave him talent [for painting],” Dolly said at the end of the interview. “I’m still hoping we live together for a long time.”

“I thank God, because God gave to me my wife,” Art said in response. “Thank you for the very long time [you have waited for me].”

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Reasons for supporting or opposing the death penalty vary from person to person — even among abolitionists, some arguments resonate more than others.

That said, there is no denying the jarring, bizarre, and often contradictory nature of state-sanctioned killing.

In cases of the death penalty for murder, the punishment is precisely that which the state insists is morally egregious and forgivable — taking a life. Meanwhile, measures are taken to alleviate the guilt and horror for people tasked with killing, such as putting blanks in some of the guns used in firing squads, using dummy buttons when administering lethal injections, or requiring death row prisoners to pray before altars so their spirits do not return to haunt their executioners.

Then there’s the way prisoners with health conditions are treated.

“There’s this terrible irony that if someone’s unwell, [the state] won’t execute them while they’re unwell,” says Elizabeth Wood, CEO of the Australia-based abolitionist group the Capital Punishment Justice Project (CPJP). “So they [say] ‘okay we’ll delay it; now you’re healthy, now we’ll kill you’.”

A prime example is the case of Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam, known to friends and family as Nagen, a young Malaysian man who was on death row in Singapore for drug trafficking.

Nagen’s case had already courted controversy and international attention because he was assessed as having an IQ of about 69, as well as ADHD and impaired executive function. Despite this, his execution was scheduled in November 2021, during the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The day before his scheduled date of death, Nagen was brought into court for an appeal hearing.

“The argument that was going to be made by the lawyer in court was that Nagen wasn’t psychologically fit to execute,” says Sara Kowal, Director of Eleos Justice at Monash University’s Law department and Vice-President of CPJP. “There was severe concern about hallucinations he was having and his mental health, and so the argument was that someone not only has to be physically fit to be executed, but mentally fit to execute.”

Shortly after the court went into session, Nagen was ushered out and the hearing was adjourned after it was discovered he had tested positive for Covid, thereby postponing his execution. “If the applicant has been afflicted by Covid-19 […] it’s our view that the execution cannot take place anyway,” Justice Andrew Phang, one of the three appeal judges, said at the time. “I think here, we have to use logic, common sense and humanity,” he added.

“Looking from afar then I thought ‘wow, that’s amazing’, because that really goes to the idea that if you can’t be physically fit to execute then maybe they will also have an appetite that you also have to be tested for psychological fitness, or psychiatric fitness,” says Sara.

The 33-year-old was given a little more time and anti-death penalty activists breathed a sigh of relief, but the reprieve was brief. Nagen made a full recovery and was hanged the following April.

Successes and setbacks

Elizabeth and Sara — both natives of Victoria, the last state to execute someone in Australia — bring up these issues in this edition of the Currents podcast, recorded while they were in Manila to attend a regional conference organised by the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network (ADPAN). In their time working on numerous cases, the pair are more than familiar with the bittersweet nature of anti-death penalty activism.

In recent years, there have been major setbacks in the abolitionist movement in the Asia-Pacific, such as executions resuming in Myanmar in 2021 after the military took power in a coup, and Singapore ramping up hangings over the past three years.

But this is weighed against some significant wins: the Philippines avoiding reintroducing the death penalty in 2017, the release of Australian Luke Cook and his Thai wife Kanyarat Wechapitak, who were acquitted in 2021 after spending four years on death row in Thailand, and Malaysia abolishing its mandatory death penalty in 2023.

More recently, abolitionists celebrated the repatriation of Mary Jane Veloso, a Filipino former domestic worker who was returned to her home country in 2024 after being on death row in Indonesia for 14 years.

The Legacy of the Bali Nine

Throughout the podcast recording, Elizabeth and Sara repeatedly bring up the Bali Nine — a case that eventually pushed the Australian government to make the abolition of capital punishment one of its foreign policy priorities.

In 2006, nine Australian citizens were caught attempting to smuggle drugs through Bali airport in Indonesia. Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran — the two supposed ringleaders — were eventually executed by firing squad about 10 years later, and Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen died of stomach cancer in 2018 while still incarcerated. Between 2018 and 2024, the six remaining members of the group were sent back to Australia, whereupon their life sentences were commuted.

The Bali Nine case struck a particular chord in Australia — not just because their citizens were serving far harsher sentences than they would’ve received at home, but also because of the perceived culpability of the Australian authorities. During the case, it was revealed that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) had tipped off the Indonesian authorities, thereby leading to their arrests, imprisonments, and, in two instances, executions.

Since then, Australia has become one of the most vocal proponents of calling for the end of capital punishment around the world. This gives a group like CPJP an opening to provide much-needed solidarity and support to peers working in retentionist states.

“I think the real benefit is operating under an abolitionist government, and one that has a policy that they actively support the worldwide abolition of the death penalty, means that we’re absolutely safe to work freely, and to support others when they’re facing an authoritarian state or genuine repercussions for their work,” says Elizabeth.

“And we do try to raise awareness in Australia as well, because it can really be forgotten about. It’s not a penalty in Australia, so the constant question is ‘Why do you do this work? We don’t have the death penalty’. It’s still a relevant human rights consideration, and we should all care about states that use this power.”

Coming up over the next week

This is the first of a two-part episode of the Currents podcast with Sara and Elizabeth — tune in next week for the second and concluding part of our discussion.

Also coming next Friday is an interview with Filipino painter and former prisoner, Arturo De Guzman Pangilinan, and his wife, Dolores (better known as Dolly). Art, as he’s known to his friends and family, spent almost 31 years in prison — some of it on death row.

Art took up painting in prison; he’s still adjusting to life as a free man after his release in January, but is committed to contributing to the anti-death penalty movement.

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