| by Hana Ibrahim
( January 11, 2013, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) For parents of Rizana Nafeek, the long wait is finally over; unfortunately, not with her release, but with her much-dreaded execution.
For more than seven years, Rizana’s family waited for Sri Lankan authorities to intervene and secure the release of their daughter, incarcerated in a prison for a crime she claimed she never committed, waiting for her execution every minute of every day.
She was sent to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2005 as a housemaid, to earn a pittance to bring some solace to her poverty-stricken home in Muttur. She was underage, 17, at the time she was sent away to take care of someone else’s family, amidst strangers, in a faraway country.
Barely six weeks after her arrival there, she was accused of homicide; alleged strangling of the four-month-old infant she was entrusted to bottle-feed. What followed was a series of events that constituted one of the most horrendous instances of miscarriage of justice the world has even seen.
But, what is more significant to note in this day of shock and grief is that not only the Government of Sri Lanka, but we, as a nation, failed to save one of our daughters, whose life was taken away by a barbaric system of injustice, in the most gruesome manner imaginable.
Every one of the political leaders, both government and opposition, are responsible for Rizana’s death. Each and every citizen of this country should bow their heads in deep shame, for we did not shout loud enough to disturb the barbaric justice system of the Saudis. Her death is our shame.
According to Parliamentarian Ranjan Ramanayake, the lone crusader who has been fighting against the abuse of housemaids in the Middle East for many years now, 436 Sri Lankan migrant workers employed in the Middle East were brought dead to Sri Lanka. “Of this figure, around 99 were those who had died in Saudi Arabia,” he said. How many more will have to die before we stop selling our women in exchange for Saudi money?
Alleging that the government did not deploy proper lawyers to argue Rizana’s case, Ramanayake said if the government had only told the truth that they were not willing to spend on the lawyers to save Rizana, the people of this country would have collected the money and paid for the lawyers. “This government did nothing to intervene in Rizana’s case for the fear that 600,000 others employed in that country would be sent back and they would lose the foreign revenue.”
As Ramanayake aptly pointed out, foreign exchange has been the deciding factor in the intensity of Sri Lanka’s appeal to the Saudis. The reality is that for Sri Lanka, for all its boasts of becoming the ‘Wonder of Asia,’ sending women to foreign countries as housemaids is still the biggest foreign exchange earner for the country.
Despite many pledges by successive governments and ministers of foreign employment, to reduce the number of domestic workers employed abroad and send more skilled workers, preferably men, to foreign countries instead, those pledges have not materialized to a satisfactory degree.
Women from the bottom stratum of society continue to seek employment abroad, and not always through legal avenues: As in the case of Rizana, who sought the assistance of an employment agent, who altered her date of birth in the passport, paving the way for the minor to seek employment abroad.
The question then is, how many more Rizanas will it take for the authorities to realize that enough blood of Sri Lankan maids has flown on the unyielding and infertile lands of Saudi Arabia?
It is now time to stop sending our daughters, mothers and wives to the Middle East, who are treated worse than slaves in those countries. Or else, tomorrow it will be another Rizana who will be bowing her head before the unmerciful sword of a Saudi executioner.
Ironically, while Rizana was being prepared for her execution; blindfolded and kneeling before the merciless sword of her executioner on 9 January 2013 around 11:40 a.m. local time; the Minister of Foreign Employment Promotion was assuring his colleagues in Parliament that there was still time to save the unfortunate girl from her gruesome fate. Unfortunately, the minister, as well as the Sri Lankan Ambassador in Saudi Arabia was unaware of the execution.
( The writer, editor, Ceylon Today)
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