History
The death penalty, and popular opposition to it, has a long history in Sri Lanka. The British introduced the death penalty after they took control of the island in 1815 for murder, and "waging war against the King." After independence, the then Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike abolished capital punishment in 1956. However, it was rapidly reintroduced after his assassination in 1959. Opposition to the death penalty started becoming increasingly widespread and the United National Party government modified the use of the capital punishment in its 1978 rewrite of the constitution. Under the new arrangement, death sentences could only be carried out if authorised by the trial judge, the attorney general and the minister of justice. If there was no agreement, the sentence was to be commuted to life imprisonment. The sentence was also to be ratified by the President. This clause effectively ended executions. The last execution in Sri Lanka took place in 1976.
Read more about this topic: Capital Punishment In Sri Lanka
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.”
—Ben C. Bradlee (b. 1921)