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

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

The Tamil Singaporean “Kampong boy”, as his autobiography would later be titled, had, with his cherubic smile, infectious laugh, and deep compassion, brought succour to a despondent, fellow Malayan community. Legal and societal machinations followed, including amendments to Singapore’s Misuse of Drugs Act—all in concert with, if not necessarily in response to, his actions. And in 2013, Yong’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. It was an unprecedented outcome, even miraculous. Yong’s mother greeted him with a big smile on his second visit to Sandakan.