Letters to the Editor

I wish to congratulate UNP parliamentarian Gayantha Karunatilleke for introducing a motion in Parliament to re-implement the death penalty. I also wish to thank Jayantha Ketagoda (UNP), Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra (PA) and Nandana Gunatilleke (JVP) for supporting the motion, which, I believe, is also backed by a majority of the people.

A special word of praise for Mr. Ketagoda for suggesting a referendum to decide whether the death penalty should be implemented or not. I am sure 99% of the voters will approve capital punishment. After all, the law of the land is the mandate of the people.

However, I was shocked that Foreign Minister Tyronne Fernando has expressed fears that if the death penalty is introduced innocent people may be sentenced to death. I feel his fears are unfounded. It is like seeing crocodiles in a bowl of water!

Being a lawyer, Mr. Fernando knows very well that we have one of the most complicated legal systems in the world, which is basically to safeguard the suspect. A murder case will have to be tried in the High Court and to prove someone guilty is extremely difficult, for witnesses will be cross-examined by clever lawyers. Fabricated stories are difficult to prove. In fact, it is very difficult to find a witness today for a murder case as his life is under threat.

If found guilty, the suspect can appeal to the Court of Appeal and finally to the Supreme Court. If everything fails, he can petition the President. A case drags on for many years and the suspect has sufficient time to defend himself.

One can argue that some may not have money to retain good lawyers. In that case, they should not resort to criminal activities.

On the other hand, by the time the suspect is convicted, huge trees would have grown on the grave of the victim. He is dead and gone. No compensation for his life, or for his dependents. If he is the breadwinner, his wife and children will starve. The children's education will be ruined and their future bleak. There is no one to help them and they will have to beg, borrow or steal.

What is the justification for killing a man? The culprits should be punished with death as that is the punishment for murder! A poor country like Sri Lanka need not maintain a murderer in prison at the expense of the state, if we cannot look after the family of the victim with adequate compensation. There is no natural justice here.

The problem is that we try to take advice on the death penalty from Colombo's affluent people who are neither a party to nor victims of murder. In most cases both murder suspects and victims are from poor families in rural areas. Ask them and they will give the answer.

On June 6, when the parliamentary debate on the death sentence was on, newspapers reported that a six-year-old girl had been raped and killed in Chilaw. What is Minister Fernando's response to this?

The country is overflowing with weapons. Politicians get protection from the armed forces at the expense of the government and oppose the death sentence in Parliament, whereas the daughters of Kusumawathie and Punchi Banda of Galewela are being dragged into the jungle, raped and killed by army deserters and thugs.

If there are holes in the legal system big enough for innocent people to be convicted, Mr. Minister, please correct them. As ordinary citizens, we have lost confidence in the legal system where the police and the judiciary are corrupt, where lawyers are making money, where witnesses are threatened with death and where cases are never heard but postponed.
Asoka Dissanayake
Kurunegala

It is a disgrace to charge VAT from patients seeking treatment at private nursing homes. The government is obliged to provide a free health service to every citizen in this country and this indirect charge is a violation of a citizen's right.

The government must consider the enormous cost benefit accrued by thousands of patients not seeking treatment at state hospitals. Can it cope with a situation where all those patients who go to private nursing homes start queueing up at state hospitals?

Now the government is mercifully spared of salaries and allowances for additional doctors and all other staff, more infrastructure, beds, linen, food, drugs, lab tests, scans, X-rays, operations, electricity, water etc. The list goes on. Over the years the government has not expanded the infrastructure and facilities to meet the demand.

It seems as if successive governments have pushed even the poorer segments to seek private nursing care even though they can hardly afford it, due to a shortage of beds, drugs and long waiting lists for operations. A huge burden of the government, both administrative and financial has been absorbed by the private patient. As such, is it ethical to charge value added tax on top of an exorbitant hospital bill.

If the government cannot provide a decent health service to its citizens, it should subsidize at least part of the bill instead of penalising the patient. Therefore, with the ever-increasing charges by doctors and nursing homes, the least the patients expect is the removal of VAT from hospital bills and private consultations.

No patient will want to feel that his misery has been exploited in the form of VAT which goes to fill government coffers to provide luxury cars and educational tours to a lucky few. It is time to launch a citizens' front to safeguard the patient from exploitation both by the private sector and the government.

To capture hardcore criminals, the police will display their photographs and according to a police spokesman, when a serious crime occurs the public can tip off the police. This is front page news.

At present there appears to be some resolve on the part of the politicians to take hardcore criminals into custody. Police have identified 28 underworld gangs and interestingly are closing in on 24. One gang per month will result in these gangs ending behind bars by May 2005.

It is the responsibility of the police to keep the public informed – at least on a monthly basis – of the progress they make. A more effective way would be to display the photos of these criminals on television. The TV stations will only be too glad to do this free of charge if their assistance is sought by the police. Viewers should also be asked to report to the police on the identity of the politicians seen with these criminals.

Police should issue a handbook giving the bio-data of these criminals. It is important to give full names, workplaces and addresses of family members and relatives. Relatives will then ensure that the criminals are captured soon in order to get their names off this handbook. A committee should also be appointed to look into the possibility of granting an amnesty to these criminals. Those who surrender under the amnesty could be asked to report to the nearest police station once a week. If an amnesty is possible for tax offenders, why not to the underworld?
Thrice-Robbed Citizen
Colombo 6

The gruesome murder of a father, a son and a daughter (the Hamers of Dehiwela) shows that even those who go to bed behind closed doors cannot be certain of waking up alive the following day.

Reader R. M. Ekanayake Banda of Kandy, who wrote about the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl, asks what we should do to these barbarians? My answer is severe punishment in public.

None is so blind as those who refuse to see. Why cannot the advocates of the abolition of the death penalty open their eyes to such gruesome murders? Perhaps they will change their opinion if their kith and kin or they themselves are subjected to these horrors. They speak of human rights as if the victims have no rights!

Our kings controlled crime by "ulathiyanawa" (spiking), getting an elephant to trample the criminal or tying his legs to two trees, which are then cut tearing the body into two. Even now, stringent laws have been enacted in other countries to deal with criminals. In Saudi Arabia, the hand is cut off for theft. In Iceland, Canada, Australia, Singapore and India owing to such stringent laws the crime rate is low compared to Sri Lanka. For instance, in Singapore, the punishment for persons who possess ganja is death. In Malaysia, anyone having a gun without a licence would be sentenced to death, but in Sri Lanka such a person would escape with a small fine.

In Sri Lanka a person may kill two, three or even more, and the "reward" he gets is board, lodging, clothes and other necessities in the government's free boarding house!
Citizen Perera
Mt. Lavinia

The Prime Minister, in his address to the Tokyo Donors’ Conference on June 9, said he would like to see a Sri Lanka where "the values of our culture can shine through for the world to see".

What we in Avadhi Lanka and many others who are concerned about the future of our country would like to know is what these values are.

Will he spell them out in detail for us, because to-date, the values our politicians have lived by have brought nothing but doom to this country?

I was disturbed to read the news item, "Lanka had air-conditioning in the first century: Prof. Gamage" (The Sunday Times, June 1).

This report states that Professor Chandrawickrema Gamage claims that "Sri Lanka had air-conditioning in the first century, not by using electricity but by hydraulic means".

The good professor has unfortunately failed to realise what is being defined as "air-conditioning". Apparently, he equates air-conditioning with "cooling". The technique being claimed is getting water to drip on to the roof and directing the air through the dripping water to cool the edifice. The professor expects to re-create this process and show it to the world. We need not go to all that trouble, but have a good look at the cooling towers in large air-conditioning plants. However, cooling does not mean air-conditioning!

Air-conditioning deals with several factors such as keeping the air temperature at a desired level, maintaining the humidity at pre-determined levels and filtering the air introduced to get rid of dust, fluff, pollen etc. It is because such factors are being maintained in pre-determined, controlled conditions that the process is described as "air-conditioning" and not as "air cooling conditioning".

A new bus halt at the Mount Lavinia junction, between the present 'far-flung' halts is a necessity. People returning from Pettah along Galle Road face much hardship at the CTB change-over times when buses make a bee-line to the depot by-passing the terminus. All south-bound buses also by-pass Mount Lavinia junction and the terminus and drop commuters at Templars Road end. Then they have to walk a 200-yard stretch with an incline added for good measure.
W. Meadows
Ratmalana

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