Producer: Thum Ping Tjin

YouTube video

Kokila Annamalai has been ever-present in activism for many years, most recently raising public awareness of the migrant worker dormitory scandal at the heart of Singapore’s COVID-19 crisis. She talks to PJ Thum and Sean Francis Han (Wake Up Singapore) about her life, her work and the theory and practice of activism. She talks about decentralised movement building, shifts towards non-violent and restorative cultures, and community organising. They also discuss the death penalty, drug policy, and the unfairness of the legal/justice system in Singapore.

For more information, please visit Beyond Social Services and Transformative Justice Collective.

This episode is a collaboration with Wake Up, Singapore. You can find out more about them online on their website, Facebook and Instagram.

Thum Ping Tjin (“PJ”) is Managing Director of New Naratif and a historian at the University of Oxford. A Rhodes Scholar, Commonwealth Scholar, Olympic athlete, and the only Singaporean to swim the English Channel, his work centres on Southeast Asian governance and politics. His most recent work is Living with Myths in Singapore (Ethos: 2017, co-edited with Loh Kah Seng and Jack Chia). Reach him at pingtjin.thum@newnaratif.com.