Activist Kirsten Han wins Human Rights Essay Prize

SINGAPORE: Local activist and journalist Kirsten Han has won Portside Review’s 2024 Human Rights Essay Prize for her essay on the city-state’s fight against drugs titled “Singapore Will Always Be At War”.

In April, Portside Review, a magazine based in Perth, Australia, announced that it had established a new prize open to Australian and international waters.

Ten shortlisted essays are to be published in the review, and Ms Han’s will be featured later this month.

The prizewinning author will receive AUD $5,000 (S$4,550) and a round trip to Perth, where they can either lecture on the theme of their essay or run workshops in the second half of this year.

Ms Han shared her “happy news” in a Facebook post on Thursday (July 11), saying she was honoured by the distinction and was “especially pleased” as it had not been an easy essay for her to write.

“I had an idea of what I wanted to say, but for a long time, I didn’t have a clear sense of how to put it into words,” Ms Han wrote before revealing that the core concept of her piece is “that unless there is change, Singapore will always be locked in a brutal, cruel war that cannot be won.”

John Ryan, one of the judges for the prize, wrote that Ms Han’s essay “writes back to the conservative political forces that continue to wage a war on drugs in Singapore.”

Moreover, he added that a “powerful voice for change” was presented in her essay.

Sampurna Chattarji, another of the judges, noted that Ms Han looked at the difficult topic of Singapore’s war on drugs “with an unsparing eye,” with a stance that is “neither militant nor monochromatic.”

Ms Han has long been an advocate against capital punishment in Singapore. She wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times in 2018 titled “What Trump Is Learning From Singapore — and Vice Versa.”

She runs the newsletter “We, The Citizens” and is a member of the Transformative Justice Collective, an organization aimed at reforming Singapore’s criminal justice system, beginning with the abolition of the death penalty. /TISG

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