EU warns Sri Lanka over death penalty

Source: Channel News Asia (16 July 2018)

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/eu-warns-sri-lanka-over-death-penalty-10535592

COLOMBO: EU ambassadors warned Sri Lanka on Monday 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.
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"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 said it was advertising this week for two hangmen to carry out the first execution in 42 years after refurbishing the gallows.
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Diplomats said they expected Sirisena to roll back the decision, but should the island go ahead it would loose 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 told AFP.

This refers to its generalised system of preferences (GSP Plus) - 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 euro (US$350 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.

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.

Southeast Asia Drug Use Persists Despite Death Penalty

Source: VOA News (16 July 2018)

https://www.voanews.com/a/drug-abuse-in-asia/4484308.html

HO CHI MINH CITY —

Southeast Asian authorities are not shy about doling out the death penalty to punish drug traffickers, and yet narcotics abuse has not abated. If anything, it is on the rise, which begs the question of whether the region’s war on drugs is working.

The latest report on global trends from the United Nations shows that while Colombia remains the world’s top source of cocaine, Asia is now emerging as a hub for both transportation and consumption of the drug. In 2016 cocaine seizures tripled across the continent in the span of just a year, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said in its June report.

But methamphetamine is making even bigger leaps in Southeast Asia because it is not as geographically restricted as cocaine, which depends on cultivation of the coca plant. Officials in countries around the Mekong region seized 65 tons of methamphetamine in tablet and crystalline form in 2017, the UNODC said in a separate report -- that is nearly 600 percent more than the amount seized a decade earlier.

The latest findings “show that drug markets are expanding, with cocaine and opium production hitting record highs, presenting multiple challenges on multiple fronts," said UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov.

Irony of drug policy

The apparent popularity of some drugs around the region stands in stark contrast to the “tough on crime” approach of many Southeast Asian governments, most of which have seen single ruling parties, military juntas, or authoritarian leaders consolidate power at the central level in recent decades.

In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has earned notoriety for alleged extrajudicial killings of drug crime suspects. In Vietnam, capital punishment is meted out, often to drug traffickers, more often than anywhere else on the planet except in China and Iran, Amnesty International says. The human rights group also referred to Malaysia as one of the “staunch supporters of the use of the death penalty for drug-related offenses.”

People take part in a protest against the government of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in front of the Philippine consulate in New York, Dec. 10, 2017.

“Mandatory death sentences and the use of the death penalty for drug-related offenses remained an issue of high concern in Southeast Asia,” Amnesty International said in its roundup of state executions worldwide in 2017.

These trends might puzzle some who expect stiffer law enforcement to blunt the use and sale of drugs. But it is a tragic irony that legal crackdowns can actually fuel the narcotics trade, according to author Johann Hari. He writes in his book Chasing the Scream that when the police crack down on drugs, they drive up prices as buyers pay sellers a premium for the legal risk. Criminalization eliminates weaker rivals and allows the big players that are left standing -- usually gangs and cartels -- to corner the market and concentrate power, Hari said.

He is part of a growing chorus of people who question or outright reject the belief that the death penalty deters or reduces crimes like drug trafficking.

“The drug problem is a complex social issue that demands a multifaceted approach towards a lasting solution,” Nymia Pimentel-Simbulan, executive director of the Philippine Human Rights Information Center, told VOA. “PhilRights has always maintained that capital punishment, being punitive and retributive in nature, is a cure worse than the poison.”

Dark web

The UNODC offers other possible explanations for the spread of drugs in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. Buyers have new online options as it becomes easier to access the dark web, where hidden sites deal in contraband from weapons to counterfeit products to drugs. The anonymity of cryptocurrencies has facilitated these purchases on illicit sites. At one point in 2017 Vietnam was among the top three countries for bitcoin trading, though much of that had to do with investment and other legal business activity.

While the U.S. is grappling with an opioid epidemic, there could be spillover effects in other regions, and for similar reasons. One cause of the U.S. crisis was the labeling change that allowed certain opioids to be marketed as non-addictive because they didn’t take full effect immediately, but had a slow release. That allowed doctors to prescribe the painkillers more widely. In Asia the opioid of choice is tramadol. The UNODC said that not only are more people abusing tramadol here, but Asia is also the main source of illegal tramadol seized around the world.

A Cataldo Ambulance medic holds used doses of naloxone after medics revived a man in his 40's who was found unresponsive from an opioid overdose in the Boston suburb of Salem, Massachusetts, Aug. 9, 2017.

As for methamphetamine, the agency said the ease of cooking rather than growing it could explain why the stimulant is taking off.

“This unique characteristic of synthetic drugs provides a comparative advantage for drug trafficking groups in the Mekong and neighboring countries,” the UNODC said, “as Asia is the center of global chemical and rapidly growing pharmaceutical industries.

There were 86 drug labs discovered in East and Southeast Asia in 2006; a decade later, the number surpassed 500, UNODC figures show. As with so much other data, it is unclear whether the abuse and sale of controlled substances are increasing -- or if authorities are just getting better at finding them.

Noose work if you can get it: Sri Lanka to hire two hangmen

Source: Channel News Asia (13 July 2018)

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/noose-work-if-you-can-get-it--sri-lanka-to-hire-two-hangmen-10528904

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka said on Friday it plans to hire two hangmen, two days after President Maithripala Sirisena said he might sign off on the execution of convicted drug traffickers arranging drug deals from jail.

A prison official said applicants would be sought for two positions of executioner, vacant since March 2014 when the last hangman quit soon after setting eyes on the gallows for the first time.
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Drug trafficking carries the death penalty in Sri Lanka but no one has been executed for any crime in the country since 1976. All death penalties have been commuted to life in prison since then.

But Sri Lanka, like other countries in Asia that have cracked down on drugs, feels it is being overwhelmed by narcotics and the president said recently action was needed.

"Since the president said he was going to implement capital punishment, we need to get ready. So we are going to hire two hangmen," Thushara Upuldeniya, a spokesman for the prison service, told Reuters.

"We will advertise and call applications for the vacancies next week."
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Sirisena told a public gathering on Wednesday there were convicted drug traffickers arranging drugs deals from prison and he might sign off on execution orders for them.

At least 18 people convicted for drugs offences could be executed, Upuldeniya said. There were also 356 people on death row for murder, he said.

Thousands of people have been killed in a war on drugs in the Philippines and scores have been killed in a similar campaign in Bangladesh.

Sri Lanka, a predominantly Buddhist country, in 2015 voted in favour of a U.N. 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.

But many citizens bemoan a sharp rise in all crime, not just drug dealing, since the end of a 26-year civil war with ethnic Tamil separatists in 2009.

The rights group Amnesty International on Wednesday urged Sirisena not to implement the death penalty, saying it should preserve its longstanding positive record on shunning "cruel and irreversible punishment".

Sri Lanka has had no executioner since March 2014 when the hangman quit weeks after he was hired, citing stress. Two hangmen hired in 2013 failed to show up.

(Reporting by Ranga Sirilal; Writing by Shihar Aneez; Editing by Robert Birsel and Nick Macfie)