On March 13, Sri Lanka said it would start carrying...

On March 13, Sri Lanka said it would start carrying out executions again, after a gap of more than 40 years, to curb rising crime. The Presidential Secretariat said in a statement: "The death sentence imposed by courts in cases of murder and drug trafficking will be carried out and will not be commuted to life imprisonment. Death sentences commuted to life imprisonment, in the absence of a unanimous recommendation, will not be further reduced to a specific period of time until the prisoner has served at least 20 years in prison. Prisoners with sentences commuted to life would also not be eligible for any remissions under general amnesties until they had served 20 years." The current practice was to consider such reductions after a prisoner had served 4 years. It was also stated that general amnesties will be granted only to mark Independence Day. At present, hundreds of prisoners are freed each year on religious festivals, when foreign dignitaries visit and on other special occasions. "In any event, this remission will not be granted to persons convicted of serious crimes, such as rape, child abuse, robbery, unauthorized possession of firearms, acts of terrorism and drug trafficking," the statement added. These decisions were taken by Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga, following concern over "the alarming increase in the incidents of crime" during the last two decades. The decision to enforce the death penalty comes hard on the heels of two shocking murders. Last month, a family of 6 including 3 girls, were brutally killed in their home at Hokandara, just south of Colombo, over a land dispute. The girls were also raped, but neighbors - fearing reprisals from the gang and harassment by the police - took many hours to report the daytime incident at the nearest police station. In October last year, there was a shocking episode in which newly-wed Rita John, a beauty queen from Mumbai, was raped and murdered by drug peddlers and political thugs in Crow Island, north of Colombo. She had just come to Colombo after marrying Jude Manoharan, son of a Sri Lankan retired police officer. As the newly-weds were walking on the beach one evening, the gang pounced on them, and dragging Rita into a bush, raped and murdered her. Her body was found two days later in a mudpit near Crow Island, a suburb of the capital Colombo. The case appalled the people in the area so deeply that they held a mock public execution. Activists and women's groups, outraged by the brutal gang rape and murder, marched on Colombo streets seeking more protection for women and harsher punishment for sex offenders. Last year 56,000 criminal cases including 900 incidents of rape were recorded by the police, but hundreds of cases go unreported because victims fear reprisals by the perpetrators or believe the police will look the other way.