Minister Keheliya Rambukwella with our regular columnist in Canada Victor Karunairajan during his visit to Sri Lanka earlier this year discussing certain crucial issues of importance in respect of his community. An advocate of a federal solution, Karunairajan stressed the need to resolve the ethnic issue as a prerequisite to Sri Lanka's development and said that the current situation is missing on the participation of the Sri Lankan diaspora. Recently he took up the case of Rizana Naffeek with the minister and expressed hope that this innocent housemaid's life could be saved.Minister of Foreign Employment Promotion and Welfare Dr. Keheliya Rambukwella is to leave for Saudi Arabia soon to seek ways to obtain a pardon for the Sri Lankan housemaid who is facing a death sentence in the kingdom for murder charges.
The ill-fated 19 year old teenager Rizana Nafeek left for Saudi Arabia on a forged passport while being an underage. She was sentenced to death for allegedly killing a baby she was made to look after and the appeal for mercy is to be heard in the Saudi courts.
The attempt by the Deputy Minister Hussein Bahila who visited Saudi Arabia last month to seek pardon for the woman failed.
Rizana's case – Letter to Minister Keheliya Rambukwella (17.July.2007)
Dear Mr Rambukwella:
Though very concerned about the case of Rizana Naffeek, I am glad to have this opportunity to write to you since meeting with you in Colombo in April. I am very pleased to note that the Government of Sri Lanka has intervened and all efforts will be made to secure pardon for Rizana condemned to die charged with the murder of an infant child hardly four months old.
I have studied this case very carefully and have written three features on it already. I will count this letter to you as my fourth.
I cannot accept and I am sure no sensible person will also, that this tragedy resulted from a premeditated murder or even a killing done on the spur of the moment. Even if one is not sure of it and there are lingering thoughts that it could be murder, a capital sentence cannot be placed on that belief or suspicion. Furthermore, Rizana was untrained in nursing a baby and here the child was only four months old. She never spoke the language of her employer neither did the employer, Rizana's language. They were only from the same faith but everything else was diverse and different.
Even though Rizana's passport indicated that she was 19 years old at the time she left Sri Lanka two years ago, it came to be known that he job agent could have falsified information on her age. The court that tried Rizana should have accepted her Certificate of Birth as the final proof, not the passport. This, the court failed and made itself partisan against Rizana.
She was not afforded the services of an interpreter no legal counsel. Her confession was forced through gestures for that must have been the truth. This is no ordinary trial of some lesser crime or other but one that involved the taking of life and the possibility of death as a sentence. How can any court act without the right course and upholding the rights of the accused?
The court should have also taken note of the fact that the mother in this case was neglectful in entrusting a 4-month old baby in the hands of un untrained teenager who did not even speak her language. I feel the mother is culpable of neglect that led to the death of the child evidently by choking during bottle-feeding. This is cause of death for many babies.
Secondly, the court should have ordered the arrest of the job agent, and if he is a Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka, then his agent in Saudi Arabia to appear before court and answer charges of illegal procurement of employees for work in Saudi Arabia. This was not done.
I hope your government will take steps to ensure that the agents in Sri Lanka do not exploit our girls, young women and single mothers most of them from poverty-stricken regions. Better still, if the government would take steps to ensure that no such persons need to seek slave employment in the countries of the Middle East where the milk of human kindness hardly exists.
Rizana should be saved at any cost. She is certainly not guilty of the crime she has been charged and no court, anywhere in the world, should be allowed to runaway, engaged in judicial killings based on charges and grounds that are unacceptable to the civilized society.
I am sure I can appeal to you to do the needful.
Thanking you,
Victor Karunairajan
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