EU SAYS PLANNED SRI LANKA EXECUTIONS CONTRADICT COMMITMENTS
July 1, 2019:
The European Union on 27 June 2019 criticized Sri Lanka’s move to resume executions, saying it would directly contradict the country’s commitment to maintain a 43-year moratorium on death penalty at the U.N. General Assembly last year. The EU said in a statement that Sri Lanka’s planned executions will send the wrong signals to the international community and investors. It said it will monitor Sri Lanka’s commitments to international conventions upon which hinges a preferential trade deal with the country. Sri Lanka has a lucrative market access to the EU through the Generalized Scheme of Preferences Plus. The concessions were withdrawn over alleged abuses immediately after a long civil war, which ended in 2009. President Maithripala Sirisena’s government took steps toward reforms and commitments on human rights to secure the program back on being elected to office in 2015. But Sirisena said this week he had signed the death warrants for four drug convicts and they would be executed soon. Sirisena told a school function on 28 June 2019 that he had decided to resume executions to save the youth from narcotics and that he has explained his position to U.N. chief Antonio Gutteres during a telephone conversation on 27 June 2019 night. Sri Lanka last executed a prisoner in 1976.
