SAUDI ARABIA/SRI LANKA: Do not let Rizana Nafeek become a victim of Saudi Arabia's infamous practise of executing juvenile offenders

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

AHRC-STM-219-2010
November 8, 2010

A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission

SAUDI ARABIA/SRI LANKA: Do not let Rizana Nafeek become a victim of Saudi Arabia's infamous practise of executing juvenile offenders

The Asian Human Rights Commission once again wishes to draw your attention to the case of Rizana Nafeek, the innocent Sri Lankan girl, who has been sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia.

Coming from a poor and war-torn family Rizana Nafeek went to Saudi Arabia as a maid in May 2005. A recruitment agency in Sri Lanka altered her date of birth in her passport making her 23 years-of-age when in fact her birth certificate later confirmed she was 17 at the time. When the infant of her employers died in her care, she was charged with murder and sentenced to death. Under harsh treatment and without a proper translator, a confession was drawn from the hapless girl at the police station, where she was also made to sign a confession in a language she did not understand. After getting access to a lawyer and being able to express the circumstances in her own language, she later retracted the confession. Nafeek explained that the incident was an accident where the child suffocated, while being bottle-fed.

Nafeek has already spent 5 years in prison. Her death sentence was confirmed in late October, 2010 after the appeal process was complete. The international community has condemned the sentence and many voices in the Arabian world as well as in Saudi Arabia have raised their concern over the unjustness of the case and pleading for clemency for the innocent girl.

However, continuous pressure needs to be put on His Royal Highness King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia and The Minister of Interior to grant her clemency and urge for a pardon by the employing family.

Nafeek was neither mature enough nor qualified to be entrusted the job as a care giver, a job which she had no choice than accepting. While the death of the child is extremely tragic and unfortunate, Rizana who was also a child at the time should not be held responsible for it.

Saudi Arabia ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1996 and is bound not to execute people convicted of crimes committed when they were under the age of 18. However, Saudi Arabia still has an extensive practise of imposing death penalty on juveniles.

Saudi Arabia has one of the highest rates of executions in the world. According to Amnesty International's statistics of death penalties and executions carried out around the world, at least 69 executions were carried out in Saudi Arabia in 2009 with 102 in 2008. At the end of 2009, Amnesty International has reported that at least 141 people are on death row in Saudi Arabia, including at least 104 foreign nationals, with migrant workers from developing countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East being the main victims.

We earnestly ask for your intervention into the case of Rizana Nafeek.

Kindly see our urgent appeal on the case and write to the relevant authorities: AHRC-UAU-041-2010.

For further information on the case please see: AHRC-STM-214-2010, STM-003-2009, STM-258-2008, UA-207-2007, UP-097-2007, UP-093-2007; PL-023-2007, UG-004-2007. (AHRC)

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SRI LANKA: Rizana Nafeek -- Death Sentence confirmed

[AHRC Open Letter] SRI LANKA: Rizana Nafeek -- Death Sentence confirmed

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 26, 2010 AHRC-OLT-011-2010 An Open Letter to President Mahinda Rajapakse Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse President Socialist Democratic Republic of Sri Lanka C/- Office of the President Temple Trees 150, Galle Road Colombo 3 SRI LANKA Fax: +94 11 2472100 / +94 11 2446657 secretary@presidentsoffice.lk Your Excellency, SRI LANKA: Rizana Nafeek -- Death Sentence confirmed I am writing this to request your intervention to save the life of a young Sri Lankan Muslim girl, a migrant worker who is facing the death sentence in Saudi Arabia. The case is well known to you and, in fact, you have in the past discussed this case with Sri Lankan Embassy personnel in Saudi Arabia and one of your ministers was also sent to that country to intervene in her case. The matter has been brought to you notice since 2007. As you are aware an appeal was made on her behalf for which the lawyer's fee was paid by human rights organisations and the Embassy personnel arranged the lawyers. After the appeal the Embassy personnel informed that they were following up the case before the courts. The appeal was pending for a long time as the sole witness who allegedly took the confession from the then 17-year-old Rizana Nafeek was missing. To our knowledge the court was unable to locate him. However, the Arab News Agency reported today that the court had confirmed her death sentence. It is disconcerting to note that the officers of the Ministry of External Affairs and the officers of the Embassy in Riyadh kept the confirmation of Rizana's death sentence a secret and made no public disclosure on the matter. Had it not been for the accidental visit by a concerned person who discovered the confirmation the whole matter may have remained secret and the unfortunate girl may have suffered the ultimate punishment before anyone, including her family, knew of it. I earnestly request you to also look into this aspect of the matter.  As you are well aware a death sentence by beheading can be carried out in Saudi Arabia quite quickly. Now the saving of the life of this young girl depends on the speedy pardon by His Royal Highness The King. There cannot be any quicker way of doing this than your own direct intervention as the head of state of Sri Lanka with His Royal Highness. King Abdulla has been quoted in his official website as saying, "We regard human rights as a gift to mankind from the Creator, and not one gratuitously granted by one human being to another. Such human rights exist in the roots of every human civilization and are not a monopoly of one culture."As this case if obviously not made on the basis of any guilt on the part of this then 17-year-old girl who was merely trying to feed a child who suffocated due to her inexperience, your intervention is needed and is well justified." I sincerely hope you will personally intervene and do your utmost to save the life of this young Muslim girl who went to work in a foreign country because of dire poverty. If the death sentence is to be executed your government will be justly held responsible for this unjustifiable death which could have been avoided if the government provided the protection she deserved as a citizen as well as a young migrant worker working in an environment where justice is limited. Thank you. Yours sincerely, Basil Fernando Director Policy & Programmes The details are as follows: The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) draws your attention to the appeal made in 2007 into the case of Rizana Nafeek, who went to Saudi Arabia as a maid when she was 17 years old and who was sentenced to death by a Saudi court on the allegation that she had killed an infant of her employer. However, she completely denied the charges and explained that the death occurred as an accident by suffocation while she was bottle feeding the child. As a result of intervention by human rights organisations an appeal was filed on her behalf and the death sentence was set aside. A supreme body in Saudi referred the case back to the original court for reinvestigation. The court called for the person who took down her alleged confession. It was found that he was not a competent interpreter that carried out the translation and that it was someone who was, in fact, a sheep herder. The court issued summons for the person to be brought to the court for examination. It was then found that the person concerned was no longer in the country. Thereafter, the case was postponed for several years as the witness could not be located. The Sri Lankan Embassy in Saudi Arabia has made statements from time to time stated that the embassy was closely following the case and was providing support to the young girl who was in prison. However, later it was almost impossible to get anyone to answer questions about the case from the Sri Lankan Embassy. Just yesterday, when the Embassy was contacted by an international press agency an Embassy spokesman stated that the case was still pending for consideration of pardon by the family. However, on the same day the Arab News announced that the court in Dawi Dami has confirmed the death sentence. The report by Arab News did not give any further details. The AHRC wrote to the High Commissioner for Human Rights to urgently intervene with the Saudi authorities for gaining pardon for the maid. We once again urge you to intervene urgently and write to His Royal Highness, King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud. DETAILED INFORMATION: The death sentence has been confirmed in the case of Rizana Nafeek. She was charged with strangling the 4-month-old child of the family for whom she worked as a housemaid. She was legally allowed only 30 days from the date of the court order to make her appeal. An appeal was made on her behalf by the intervention of human rights groups who paid for the lawyers and her death sentence was set aside pending appeal. Rizana Nafeek was born on February 4, 1988 and comes from a war-torn, impoverished village. Here, many families, including those of the Muslim community try to send their under aged children for employment outside the country, as their breadwinners. Some employment agencies exploit the situation of the impoverished families to recruit under aged girls for employment. For that purpose they engage in obtaining passports by altering the dates of birth of these children to make it appear that they are older than they really are. In the case of Rizana Nafeek, the altered date, which is to be found in her passport now, is February 2, 1982. It was on the basis of this altered date that the employment agency fixed her employment in Saudi Arabia and she went there in May 2005. She went to work at the house of Mr. Naif Jiziyan Khalaf Al Otaibi whose wife had a new-born baby boy. A short time after she started working for this family she was assigned to bottle feed the infant who was by then four months old. Rizana Nafeek had no experience of any sort in caring for such a young infant. She was left alone when bottle feeding the child. While she was feeding the child the boy started choking, as so often happens to babies and Rizana Nafeek panicked and while shouting for help tried to sooth the child by feeling the chest, neck and face, doing whatever she could to help him. At her shouting the mother arrived but by that time the baby was either unconscious or dead. Unfortunately, misunderstanding the situation the family members treated the teenager very harshly and handed her over to the police, accusing her of strangling the baby. At the police station also, she was very harshly handled and did not have the help of a translator or anyone else to whom she could explain what had happened. She was made to sign a confession and later charges were filed in court of murder by strangulation. On her first appearance in court she was sternly warned by the police to repeat her confession, which she did. However, later she was able to talk to an interpreter who was sent by the Sri Lankan embassy and she explained in her own language the circumstances of what had happened as stated above. This version was also stated in court thereafter. According to reports, the judges who heard the case requested the father of the child to use his prerogative to pardon the young girl. However, the father refused to grant such pardon. On that basis the court sentenced her to death by beheading. This sentence was made on June 16, 2007. The said murder allegedly took place in February 2005 when Rizana Nafeek was only 17 years old. Sources said she had modified her age on her passport so that she could enter Saudi Arabia to work. Accordingly, she was still considered a minor by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Child. Posted on 2010-10-26

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Mother of Sri Lankan worker facing Saudi death sentence speaks to WSWS

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Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Court recently confirmed a death sentence imposed on Rizana Nafeek, a young Sri Lankan domestic servant. Nafeek left her village in Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province in May 2005, at the age of 17. Her job agent persuaded her to alter her age in order to be eligible for employment. Just two weeks later, she was charged with murdering the four-month-old son of the family who employed her as a maid. (See: “Top Saudi court confirms death sentence on Sri Lankan worker”)


A Saudi court found Nafeek guilty in July 2007 and sentenced her to death by beheading. The verdict was based on a confession extracted by the police. Abandoned by the Sri Lankan government, she received no legal assistance or competent translation in court. A legal appeal was finally launched with the assistance of the Asian Human Rights Commission. When she was provided a proficient translator, Nafeek denied the charges against her. She explained to the Supreme Court that the baby’s death had been an accident—he choked while she was feeding him and she was unable to save him.


The Supreme Court rejected her account. Although appeals have been made to the Saudi king to halt her execution, he has not responded. Her plight illustrates the widespread intimidation of foreign workers who provide the Saudi elite with cheap labour. The Rajapakse government in Sri Lanka has remained callously indifferent to her frame-up because it does not want to disrupt one of its main sources of foreign exchange—remittances from workers living overseas. More than 500,000 Sri Lankans, mostly young, work in Saudi Arabia.


WSWS reporters recently visited Nafeek’s village in the war-ravaged Eastern Province of Sri Lanka and spoke with her mother, friends and neighbours.


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Muttur is a town 280 kilometres from Colombo and 25 kilometres from Trincomalee, the capital of the eastern province—on the southern side of the Trincomalee Harbour. The ferry service to Muttur, which takes less than an hour from Trincomalee, has not been operating for about six months. Because of the poor state of the roads, WSWS reporters took more than two hours to travel from Trincomalee to Muttur, crossing three small rivers by barge.


Safi Nagar, where Nafeek lived, is one of the extremely impoverished Muslim villages in the Muttur district. The villagers’ main sources of income are wood cutting for firewood, rice or vegetable cultivation, and raising cattle. Almost all the residents live in small huts with mud or brick walls and straw roofs.


Nafeek took a job in Saudi Arabia because she was desperate to earn money for herself and her family. Because they have no other way out of poverty, many young girls seek work in the Middle East, even though they have heard about the terrible conditions facing foreign workers.


When the WSWS team went to Nafeek’s house, her mother Refeena Nafeek was washing cooking pans. Rizana Nafeek’s two sisters and brother had gone to school and her father was at the hospital. Their house is just a shelter, with walls made of loosely placed bricks and a roof covered by straw.

Rafeena Nafeek was sad and fed up after waiting five years for the release of her eldest child. At first, she was reluctant to speak but later explained: “My poor girl is still in the prison at the doorsteps of her death. I have given numerous interviews. She had high hopes to help our family since we were living in poverty. Her first thoughts were a nice house and a good education for others in her family.

“Some days after her leaving in 2005, we received a letter from her saying that she had to look after ten children. She was not happy and wanted to change her employer.” According to the letter, Rizana was overworked daily. She had to get up at three in the morning and work till late at night.


Then the Nafeek family was informed that she had been arrested by Saudi police on murder charges. In 2007, after she had been sentenced to death, Rizana’s parents were taken to the prison in Riyadh to see their daughter. Rafeena cried and told us: “I am not a murderer.”


Mohamed Jihad, a school teacher, knew the Nafeek family. He had taught at Safi Nagar Imam School when Rizana studied there. He commented: “The media mostly refer to the inhumane treatment of the housemaids by their masters and the ruthlessness of the judicial proceedings taken by the Saudi authorities against Rizana.


“Yes, the treatment by the Saudi masters is inhumane and the judicial proceedings are extremely unjust. At the same time, the question is: why did this young woman have to leave the country when she was as young as 17? Dire poverty forced her to leave school at Grade 9 and find a job to feed her family.”


Because of the intolerable conditions in Sri Lanka, Mohamed explained, many young women, including under-age girls, went to the Middle East to work. He added: “Altering the date of birth is not a big deal for job agencies. They have done it for many under-age girls like Rizana Nafeek because they just want the money.


“Rizana was a beautiful, decent and innocent girl. She was very good at learning. Teachers named her as a prefect just before she left the school. If she had a chance she would definitely have continued higher studies.”


Mohamed explained the conditions in the schools. Safi Nagar village Imam School is conducted in old buildings. For more than 300 children, there are only 13 teachers. After Grade 9, if students want to follow higher studies they have to walk two and half kilometres to the Almina School. Four classes in that school are conducted under trees. There are inadequate teachers in every school, particularly for English, science and maths.


A neighbour of the Nafeek family criticised the response of the Sri Lankan government. “We heard that the President [Mahinda Rajapakse] has sent a letter to the Saudi king requesting a pardon for this poor girl. It is just a gimmick.” He accused the authorities of being concerned only about foreign revenue.


Condemning the Sri Lankan embassy in Saudi Arabia, he added: “They are not taking proper measures to protect the lives and the working conditions of the Sri Lankan immigrant workers. In Rizana Nafeek’s case, they did not even follow the case closely or know about the death sentence until it was confirmed by the Supreme Court.”


During the war between the Sri Lankan military and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), people lived in utter tension. They had to flee the Muttur area twice. The first was in 1987, when Indian forces that came to assist the Sri Lankan government and occupied the north and east. People fled to refugee camps.


Throughout the civil war, Safi Nagar was a border village. One side was under government rule. The other was controlled by the LTTE, which killed several villagers when they went to the jungle to collect firewood. Since the villagers were afraid to go wood cutting, their incomes fell rapidly.


In August 2006, after the Rajapakse government restarted the war in July that year, the military launched an offensive against the LTTE. People in the Muttur area, including Safi Nagar, fled—many just with the clothes they were wearing. They returned after the war was over in the East, but the living conditions have only worsened since.


Even after the war many people have been unable to cultivate their small plots, which are located away from their homes. The security forces have barred access, and residents suspect that the government is going to use the land for its own purposes.


Fareena, a housewife, expressed anger about the deteriorating conditions: “We thought that after ending the war the government would deliver a good time for us as they promised. But nothing has improved. Rather, it has become bitter. We thought that our husbands could do their wood cutting freely and earn a living. But still there is no demand for firewood and they have to sell it for a pittance. Amid the sky rocketing cost of living, our situation has become more and more helpless.” (WSWS)

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