{"id":90945,"date":"2019-07-01T16:29:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-01T23:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=90945"},"modified":"2019-07-01T16:29:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-01T23:29:00","slug":"hanging-to-hang-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/07\/01\/hanging-to-hang-on\/","title":{"rendered":"HANGING TO HANG ON"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>By Rohana R. Wasala<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p><em>We are dismayed by these reports\nthat will see Sri Lanka surrender its positive record on the death penalty.\nExecutions will not rid Sri Lanka of drug-related crime. They represent the\nfailure to build a humane society where the protection of life is valued. The\nlast thing that Sri Lanka needs right now is more death in the name of\nvengeance\u201d&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Biraj Patnaik,\n     South Asia Director at Amnesty International (AI), in a final appeal from\n     the international body&nbsp; to Sri Lanka concerning the imminent\n     execution of some prisoners on the death row for drug related crimes\/June\n     25, 2019\/<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amnesty.org\">www.amnesty.org<\/a>&nbsp;<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>It is reported that the president has signed the death warrants of\nsome condemned prisoners awaiting execution, having been convicted for\ndrug-related offences, and that all arrangements are now in place for hanging\nthem before the June 21 &#8211; July 1 National Drug Eradication Week ends. As that\nperiod is drawing to a close, the hangings must be considered imminent. I hope\nthe condemned persons are still alive when you read this (which I am writing on\nJune 28). However, it is not too late for the president to desist from the rash\ncourse of action he has decided on. As AI\u2019s South Asia Director Biraj Patnaik\nsays executions will not rid Sri Lanka of drug-related crime. Patnaik is\nexpressing a commonsense view, which many people share. The damning criticism\nimplicit in the rest of the extract quoted above, though baseless, should not\nbe taken lightly.&nbsp; The president doesn\u2019t seem to have consulted his advisors about\nthe matter (which is a costly waste of resources). Decisions can be retracted\nif later found to be erroneous, but deaths are not reversible once committed,\nif it is subsequently discovered that they resulted from a miscarriage of\njustice. If someone must be executed as a judicial necessity for crimes\ncommitted, so be it. But there need not be an unexplained hurry or suddenness\nin executing them, as in this case there obviously is.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is true that Sri Lanka has a devastatingly&nbsp; serious drugs\nproblem. It must and can be contained as demonstrated in the past, until total\neradication is achieved. The surest way is to enforce the law strictly,\nrehabilitate addicts and traffickers, break the nexus between politicians and\ndrug dealers, and the rest of a whole host of measures as advocated by relevant\nexperts and law enforcement specialists. It will be a never ending process like\nnormal policing. The president\u2019s avowed commitment to the eradication of the\nmenace is commendable. However, his mission is doomed by what has become the\norder of the day since 2015: politicizing and personalising all issues from\nconstitution making to crime busting. The current rulers do this for the dual\npurpose of just staying on in power ignoring the \u2018Curses, not loud, but deep\u2019\nof the masses that elected them to power, now disillusioned, and of keeping\ntheir rivals out of power, or even out of politics if possible. Some reflection\nwill show the impartial observer that little more than that has happened in Sri\nLanka since 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After a visit to the Philippines where the president met with his\ncounterpart there the formidable Duterte who has adopted some drastic measures\nto overcome a hopelessly severe domestic drug addiction and trafficking problem\nin his country with a population of more than 100 million to Sri Lanka\u2019s 21\nmillion, he has decided to take a leaf out of the latter\u2019s book. That won\u2019t do.\nThere are huge differences between the two countries, their peoples, cultures\nand especially the personalities of the two leaders. A tiny quail can\u2019t match\nan elephant in the size of its droppings, as the Sinhala saying goes. However,\nthe most significant difference between the two must be mentioned. Duterte\nstood up to the US president when the latter expressed concern about his\nmerciless campaign against the problem that resulted in thousands of summary\nexecutions; and he launched his controversial operations without thinking of\nits political fallout on himself; and the other thing is that Duterte enjoys\nmore recognition than the Sri Lankan president at the UN as a substantially\nlarge contributor of funds to the world body. In contrast, the sudden\nintensification of the fight on the drug menace in Sri Lanka seems to have been\nmotivated by a desire to salvage at least the semblance of credibility that the\nchampion thinks he still has.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But one cannot become a hero by hanging, be it hanging for killing\noneself, for carrying out judicial execution or for committing plain murder.\nBut the lame duck president, at the tail end of his disastrous presidency,\nseems determined to go on with the hangings, come hell or high water, for that\n\u2018heroic\u2019 purpose. And in effect, he will be doing all three in an utterly\nmeaningless \u2018suicide hanging\u2019 (on the analogy of suicide bombing), if such a\nthing is conceivable by any stretch of the imagination. Circumstances, for most\nof which he must share responsibility with his Yahapalana partners, have\nparadoxically lulled him into a state of self-hypnosis induced by a Macbethian\nsense of false security.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The sudden ending of the thirty-three year long moratorium on the\ndeath penalty (there hasn\u2019t been an execution since 1976 in Sri Lanka) as a\ndesperate measure is not likely to cause the war on drugs to gain any special\ntraction among the public other than what is already there. The reason is that,\nalthough the drug problem is a crucial issue, there are immediately more\npressing problems to be addressed&nbsp; before that, such as the problem of\nthreatened national security that came to light with the April 21 Easter Sunday\nbombings, which, according to opposition politicians, could be a harbinger of\nworse trouble from geopolitical players in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It will be a more dignified thing for the president to do to\nlisten to the advice of the Most Venerable Mahanayake Theras and that of His\nEminence the Cardinal to call off the executions than to seem to accede to the\ndemand of the AI which has always had a jaundiced view of Sri Lanka due to\nfalse propaganda to \u2018Halt plans for executions, once and for all\u2019. However,\nthough Amnesty International, as a pro-Western organization, is a biased entity\nas far as Sr Lanka is concerned, its request on this occasion is not\nunreasonable.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Rohana R. Wasala We are dismayed by these reports that will see Sri Lanka surrender its positive record on the death penalty. Executions will not rid Sri Lanka of drug-related crime. They represent the failure to build a humane society where the protection of life is valued. The last thing that Sri Lanka needs [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rohana-r-wasala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90945","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=90945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90945\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}