Capital punishment in Sri Lanka

[1] Although no executions have been carried out since 23 June 1976, death sentences continue to be handed down by the High and Supreme Courts for murder and drug trafficking convictions.

[2] The government decided to reinstate capital punishment in 2004 for cases of rape, drug trafficking and murder after the assassination of High Court judge Sarath Ambepitiya.

Opposition to the death penalty started to become increasingly widespread and the United National Party government modified the use of it in its 1978 rewrite of the constitution.

In March 1999, after spurts of violence near the end of her first term in office, Chandrika Kumaratunga stated that the government would be reintroducing the death penalty.

With the end of the Sri Lankan Civil War the country saw a sharp rise in child abuse, rape, murder and drug trafficking, prompting some lawyers and politicians to call for the reinstatement of the death penalty.

President Maithripala Sirisena told the government, which earlier had unanimously backed the reinstatement of capital punishment, that he “was ready to sign the death warrants”.