Europe envoys warn Sri Lanka

TRADE DEALS STOP IF HANGING RETURNS

EU ambassadors warned Sri Lanka on Monday (16) against ending its 42-year moratorium on capital punishment and said the island risked losing trade concessions if it went ahead.

Last week president Maithri­pala Sirisena said repeat drug of­fenders would be hanged as part of his administration’s new crack­down on narcotics.

“The diplomatic missions have requested the president to main­tain the moratorium on the im­plementation of the death penal­ty and to uphold Sri Lanka’s tradi­tion of opposition to capital pun­ishment,” the EU ambassadors said in a joint statement.

The communique was sup­ported by their colleagues from Canada and Norway.

Police believe the Indian Ocean island is being used as a transit point by drug traffickers. More than a tonne of cocaine seized in recent years was de­stroyed by police in January.

The main Welikada prison was set to advertise this week for two hangmen to carry out the first ex­ecution in 42 years after refur­bishing the gallows.

Diplomats said they expected Sirisena to roll back the decision, but should the island go ahead it would lose preferential access for its exports to the 28-member EU bloc.

“If Sri Lanka resumes capital punishment, Colombo will imme­diately lose the GSP-Plus status,” an EU diplomatic source said.

This refers to its generalised sys­tem of preferences – a favourable tariff scheme to encourage devel­oping nations to respect human rights – restored by the EU in May 2017 after a seven-year hiatus.

Sri Lanka was denied GSP Plus status in 2010 after failing to meet its rights obligations. The Sirisena administration reapplied after coming to power in 2015.

EU diplomats have estimated that Sri Lanka gains an estimated €300 million advantage annually thanks to the GSP-Plus system.

Prison spokesman Thushara Upuldeniya said there were 373 convicts on death row in Sri Lanka, including 18 for serious drug crimes.

“If the president starts signing death warrants, we should be able to carry out his orders. As far as the gallows is concerned, we are ready. All we need is the execu­tioner in place,” Upuldeniya said.

Death sentences are still hand­ed down for crimes including mur­der, rape and drug-related crimes, but the last execution was in 1976.

Nearly 900 people are currently in prison after been sentenced to death, although many have had their sentences commuted to life or are appealing.

Sri Lanka, a predominantly Buddhist country, in 2015 voted in favour of a UN resolution for a moratorium on the death penalty.

International drug smugglers have increasingly turned to Sri Lanka as a transit hub in Asia, authorities have said.

Authorities say a tougher ap­proach is needed to combat what they say is an increase in drug-related crime.

Sirisena said last week he was “ready to sign the death warrants” of traffickers and deploy the mili­tary to tackle drug crime.

“From now on, we will hang drug offenders without commut­ing their death sentences,” gov­ernment spokesman Rajitha Sen­aratne said.

“We were told that the Philip­pines has been successful in de­ploying the army and dealing with this problem. We will try to repli­cate their success,” he said. (AFP)