Sept. 26
SRI LANKA:
Prisons dept to fill hangman’s vacancies
The Prisons Department will recruit 2 personnel for the existing vacancies for
the post of hangman, a Department senior official told the Daily News. He said
that applications will be called from suitable candidates shortly.
He also said that the Department is considering to introduce a new Sinhala name
for the job title “alugosuwa”. The Department will seek public help to choose a
suitable new name and suggestions are requested to be sent to the Prisons
Headquarters in Colombo.
He noted that Bogambara and Colombo prisons have gallows and there are 339
inmates on death row. However, Sri Lanka has not implemented the death penalty
since 1976.
(source: Sri Lanka Daily News)
INDIA:
Ramdev's supporter Rajbala succumbs to injurie
Yoga guru Baba Ramdev's supporter Rajbala, who was injured in the pre-dawn
police action in Ramlila Maidan on June 5, succumbed to her injuries this
morning at the G.B. Pant Hospital.
Fifty-one-year-old Rajbala was seriously injured during Delhi police clampdown
on Baba Ramdev's agitation against the black money issue at Ramlila Ground in
June.
The yoga guru had been on a hunger strike against corruption along with 65,000
followers when the Delhi Police on the Central Government's orders cracked down
on their camp late on the night of June 5 at the Ramlila Maidan.
Delhi Police fired tear gas shells, when Ramdev was on his indefinite
"fast-unto-death" stir to demand several radical reforms in the prevailing
political system, including a death penalty for corrupt officials.
(source: ANI)
SINGAPORE:
Singapore's Leaky Drugs Enforcement----Maybe it's not a sure thing
Changed statistics show that harsh policies aren’t working as well as had been
hoped
Singapore’s fearsome reputation for dealing with drug users and dealers seems
to have a few holes. The limited data that is available tends to suggest that
harsh policies, most notably the death penalty for dealers in quite small
amounts, are not as successful as might be thought and that policies may be
being applied selectively to keep foreign tourists and local expatriates from
featuring in too many cases which might rebound negatively on the Republic.
Singapore’s drug enforcement agency the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) has just
admitted that instead of improving as previously claimed, the drug situation
has actually gotten worse. Admitting to an error in the compilation of
statistics, bureau director Ng Boon Gay said that figures now showed that in
2008 there had been 2,537 drug abuse arrests compared with the 1,925 originally
reported and that this had risen 2,887 in 2010 not the fall to 1,805 previously
reported. The discrepancies were blamed on a new technology system introduced
in 2008. There has also been a surge in arrests over the past 8 weeks.
Without all details on the age, race and income level of all those arrested and
location of arrests and type of drug involved it is difficult to draw too many
conclusions from the raw numbers. Some cases do get publicity which gives some
indications of the issue. On September 6 and 7, the Central Narcotics Bureau
arrested a dealer and 15 of his clients. The clients were aged between 13 and
25 years and were mainly but not all expatriates of diverse nationalities but
included Singaporeans. The suspected trafficker, a 35-year-oldSingapore
permanent resident was said to have been peddling cannabis. (For cannabis
dealing the death penalty applies at 500 grams but only a fraction of this
amount was seized from the clients and from the Ang Mo Kio residence of the
trafficker. But a trafficker can still face up to 20 years in jail and 15
strokes of the cane).
The expatriate teenagers at least seem likely to get off lightly. One New
Zealand boy was released without charge. And according to the Straits Times,
expatriate teenagers have claimed that cannabis, Ecstasy and even heroin can be
obtained at private, invitation-only parties. However, usually only cannabis
--/marijuana -- is on offer. According to this report, marijuana sells for
between S$35 and S$75 for a 3 gram pack – not a huge amount for Singapore’s
mostly very prosperous expats.
Drug availability has been so commonplace that schools for expatriates are
resorting to random urine and hair tests of pupils as young as 11. Details of
what happens to those caught with traces of drug use are not available.
However, indications are that schools like to keep this in-house and apply
sanctions such as suspensions and possibly expulsion rather than hand the
culprit over to the police.
The arrests of expatriate teenagers drew lots of attention. Much less normally
goes to the 20 other cases that, according to the latest data, Singapore sees
in an average week and are believed to be focused more in low than high income
areas. But the CNB has been especially active in the past 2 months with dozens
of arrests mostly related to heroin and ice, both said to be in abundance
around the region. Burma is the main heroin source but while Singapore is happy
to bank the proceeds of the heroin trade bosses, it has harsh penalties for the
street traders and regular users in Singapore. On Aug. 4 arrests yielded 2.8
kilos of heroin. On Aug. 12, 116 people, including 11 alleged dealers, were
detained and in mid-September another 80 users and seven alleged dealers in
heroin and ice were caught. Thus in 6 weeks alone about 10 candidates for
possible execution were apprehended.
But even the severest penalties for dealers can do little to stop the import
for personal use from neighboring countries. Indonesia and Thailand are
especially ready sources of the recreational drug of choice, particularly for
low-income groups, throughout East Asia – methamphetamines which go by various
names including ice and shabu but Malaysia has problems as well. It is
particularly appealing to low-income foreign workers doing Singapore’s dirty
and dangerous jobs. Pills such as Erimin-5 are also known to find a ready
market among teenagers, mostly from low-income families. Singapore also has its
share of old-time heroin addicts.
At the same time little has been heard of late of arrests for cocaine usage –
though there have been cases in the past. This is the favored recreational drug
of well-off expatriates, notably those in the financial and entertainment
sectors. Could this be because the authorities are more concerned with
Singaporeans abusing drugs than transient foreigners? It would be logical.
Likewise such users may get their supplies from abroad rather than through
dealers in Singapore for whom the death penalty kicks in at 30 grams.
All told, Singapore’s hard line on drugs has almost certainly kept usage below
rates in equivalent societies such as Hong Kong. But such success in
suppressing occasional recreational use of party drugs has come at a high cost
in human lives without necessarily making Singapore any less free of addiction
than its peers.
(source: Asia Sentinel)
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