LSSP concerned over death penalty

The Lanka Sama Samaja Party in a release said it is deeply concerned about reports that the death penalty will be resumed after over 30 years, as a response to the ever-increasing rate of serious crime and murders.

The LSSP has been consistently opposed to the death penalty as a mode of punishment. Supporting a motion for the abolishing of the death penalty, Dr. N.M. Perera stated in the State Council that society has set up a false standard. They are still maintaining the old tradition of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and that a man who murders should also be murdered.

Studies all over the world have shown death penalty has not been a greater deterrent than life imprisonment. Murders are planned by criminals who think that they will never be caught.

The abolition of the death penalty is a world-wide trend. In both 2007 and 2008, Sri Lanka voted at the United Nations in favour of resolutions calling for a moratorium on executions as a step towards the ultimate abolishing the death penalty.

The resolutions emphasized the death penalty undermines human dignity, that there is no conclusive evidence of the deterrent value of the death penalty and that any miscarriage or failure of justice in the implementation of the death penalty is irreversible and irreparable, it also said.

The LSSP point out that rather than bringing the death penalty back, what is needed is better investigation and better prosecution. Society is naturally worried that persons who commit serious crimes come out of prison early.

To prevent this, there must be judicial control of parole, at least in respect of those who are sentenced for long periods of imprisonment.

Legal provision should be made for judges to make order that the offender's term of imprisonment should not be reduced unless authorized, it said.