Announcing: Human Rights Essay Prize Winner
Portside Review is pleased to announce the winning essay for the 2024 Human Rights Essay Prize: Kirsten Han for the essay ‘Singapore Will Always Be At War’. Dani Netherclif’s essay ‘Read as a Boy’ has taken the runner up position.
Kirsten Han is a journalist, writer and activist from Singapore. She runs We, The Citizens, a newsletter covering Singapore from a rights-based perspective, and Altering States, a newsletter focused on drugs and drug policy. She has been an anti-death penalty activist since 2010 and is a member of the Transformative Justice Collective.
Kirsten’s essay, ‘Singapore Will Always Be At War’ will be published as a featured essay followed closely by the next issue of Portside Review in late July.
Judges Comments
This essay writes back to the conservative political forces that continue to wage a war on drugs in Singapore…Han shares the story of her activism along with the stories of some of those caught in the system while at the same time providing expert testimony to the expedience that has made the island state develop calluses on the heart. There is a powerful voice for change presented in this essay. — John Ryan
Kirsten Han looks at a tough topic – Singapore’s war on drugs – with an unsparing eye. As an activist advocating against the death penalty for drug users, her stance is neither militant nor monochromatic. Her text is leavened as much by knowledge, research and reportage as it is by personal interactions with those who have suffered the abuses of the system…. — Sampurna Chattarji
At the core of this essay is a tension between the conservative tendency to attribute wrongdoing to personal failure vs. the progressive instinct to emphasise systemic injustice and rehabilitate those who have gone astray…The essay's picture of ideological conflict and the dire impacts it has on individuals' life vs. death is gripping. — Frances An
2024 Winner
Kirsten Han - Essay titled ‘Singapore Will Always Be At War’
2024 Runner Up
Dani Netherclift - Essay titled ‘Read as a Boy’
2024 Shortlist
Atul Joshi - Essay titled ‘Wild Mohini’
Dani Netherclift - Essay titled ‘Read as a Boy’
Dominic Carpio - Essay titled ‘Blood-red Tags: Red-Tagging and Ruling by Fear in the Philippines’
EJ Clarence - Essay titled ‘Feathered on the Breath of Chance’
Elaine Pratley - Essay titled ‘When sandwiches and fish feed peace’
Ella Holmes - Essay titled ‘Atlas, Rats, and Writing the Candle’
Gracia Ayni Warella - Essay titled ‘Here I Am, Disempowered’
Keletso Mopai - Essay titled ‘How (Not) to Talk About Colorism’
Kirsten Han - Essay titled ‘Singapore Will Always Be At War’
Salil Tripathi - Essay titled ‘Justice and Human Rights in the Age of Surveillance’
Sara Gingold - Essay titled ‘Legitimately Ill’
Stevie Lane - Essay titled ‘Trans Rights are Human Rights’