{"id":44465,"date":"2015-06-04T22:19:24","date_gmt":"2015-06-05T04:19:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=44465"},"modified":"2015-06-04T14:21:53","modified_gmt":"2015-06-04T21:21:53","slug":"sirisenas-support-for-death-penalty-is-anti-buddhist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/06\/04\/sirisenas-support-for-death-penalty-is-anti-buddhist\/","title":{"rendered":"Sirisena\u2019s Support for Death Penalty is Anti-Buddhist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Metteyya Brahmana<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

While it should be no surprise that Sri Lanka\u2019s new puppet-of-the-West president \u2013 Maithripala Sirisena – is calling for the death penalty for drug dealers, it is surprising that he is doing this in a country where over 70% of the population is Buddhist.\u00a0 It\u2019s as if he doesn\u2019t understand the value of human life from a Buddhist perspective, how rare human birth actually is, or the import of popular teachings of the Buddha on human redemption, like the Angulimala Sutta.<\/p>\n

As most school children in Sri Lanka know, Angulimala was a mass murderer who killed 999 people, and was intent on killing his mother as his next victim when the Buddha intervened.\u00a0 The Buddha displayed supernormal powers of being able to outpace Angulimala while still walking, and this convinced Angulimala to find out what the Buddha\u2019s teachings were all about, which eventually led to his spiritual awakening and enlightenment as an Arahant monk.\u00a0 Despite Angulimala\u2019s reformed character, on his alms rounds as a monk he had to constantly endure insults and even stoning from village folks who had remembered his days as a notorious robber and killer.\u00a0 The Buddha explained that these leftover unpleasantries were simply the operation of unexhausted bad kamma, which had been attenuated by Angulimala\u2019s changed nature but not eliminated.<\/p>\n

What is often overlooked in the Angulimala story was the Buddha\u2019s understanding of human worth, and that the purpose of life as a human is to reach spiritual liberation from samsara even if one has been lost most of their life pursuing worldly pleasures.\u00a0 The other overlooked element is the balanced view (upekkha or equanimity) the Buddha held toward the victims and the perpetrator of Angulimala\u2019s heinous acts.\u00a0 In applying this lesson in the Angulimala story to the drug dealer, we have an even simpler case, in which one is trying to make money by selling drugs because they obviously have no other means of earning the same income.\u00a0 The drug consuming victim is rarely killed as a result of drug dealing, and this victim is usually suffering from a mental and\/or physical addiction to a drug they voluntarily chose to consume. In such a case, the Buddha would favor Restorative Justice, in which the dealer would spend much of his time in prison being exposed to the horrors of drug addiction, and learning a marketable skill so he would not have to deal drugs when he is released from prison.<\/p>\n

The purported purpose of killing the drug dealer is that this will deter others from drug dealing, but we already know from the organized drug trade around the world that those in the trade constantly risk their lives and this is an accepted part of being in the drug dealing business.\u00a0 We also know from the failed war on drugs in the United States, that no matter how many people they incarcerate, or how many drug kingpins they kill, demand for drugs is what creates supply, just like any other product.\u00a0 When they kill one drug kingpin, another one immediately takes his place, and this process has been going on, and on for decades.\u00a0 Therefore, killing drug dealers will not stop drug dealing, treating and educating the drug consumer and drying up demand for the drug is the only long term solution.<\/p>\n

The other problem with introducing state murder of drug dealers in Sri Lanka is that this could easily be used as a political tool to kill political opponents, as Ranil and the UNP have just demonstrated how easy it is to politicize law enforcement.\u00a0 With the death penalty on the books, law enforcement could fairly easily plant drugs on political opponents and then have these opponents killed using a corrupt criminal justice system that is being directed toward the political ends of the party that controls them.\u00a0 Sri Lanka would then end up like Egypt in which the entire opposition party is thrown in prison, and then executed.\u00a0 I guess if you are Ranil and the UNP, this may seem like heaven, but it is a ridiculous proposition for any country that truly cares about democracy and good governance, especially a Buddhist country like Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Metteyya Brahmana While it should be no surprise that Sri Lanka\u2019s new puppet-of-the-West president \u2013 Maithripala Sirisena – is calling for the death penalty for drug dealers, it is surprising that he is doing this in a country where over 70% of the population is Buddhist.\u00a0 It\u2019s as if he doesn\u2019t understand the value of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}