UK renews call on Sri Lanka to abolish death penalty

15 February 2019 02:45 am

The UK Government renewed its call on Sri Lanka, a country which has consistently backed UN resolutions for worldwide suspension of executions, to abolish the death penalty.

UK Minister of State for Asia and the Pacific, Mark Field, said the UK Government calls on all countries, including Sri Lanka, to abolish the death penalty.

“The Sri Lankan Government is well aware of the UK and EU position on the death penalty and we hope the moratorium will be sustained,” he said in UK Parliament when MP Jim Cunningham asked what discussions the UK has had with Sri Lanka on the latter’s decision to end moratorium on death penalty.

State Minister Field said Sri Lanka had been a consistent supporter of UN General Assembly resolutions calling for a worldwide suspension of executions since the first such resolution was proposed in 2007.

“Earlier, the British High Commission in Colombo joined the EU delegation in lobbying the Sri Lankan Foreign Affairs Ministry to maintain this position in the December 2018 UN vote, supporting a moratorium on the use of the death penalty. In January 2019, after further reporting of the intention to restart the death penalty, our High Commission raised the issue with senior officials in the Sri Lankan Government,” he said. (Lahiru Pothmulla)