Sri Lankan girl on death row in saudi for the death of baby in her care

format_quote Originally Posted by north_malaysian

Why Saudi Gov't allowed an underage girl to be a nanny. And I'm blaming the baby's parents too.... they trusted a 17 year old girl to take care of their baby 24/7?

Crazy!!!ffended:

I would suggest it is because the Saudis have become so effete and spoiled by their oil wealth that they feel compelled to bring in virtual slaves from some of the most impoverished places on Earth to take care of their precious Saudi larvae. Then, if the slave does not meet their expectations, they chop her head off. It saves on return slave-ship fare.

Here is my question...what does the Saudi mom have to do besides take care of the baby? She can't vote (usually). She can't drive. Is she going to play golf in a burka? I suppose she could get the virtual-slave Philippino gardener and maint. guy to drive her down to the air-conditioned mall and shop for jewelry and French perfume.

I suppose I sound a bit anti-Saudi, don't I?

Khaled Sheik Mohammed had better due process rights than this poor girl. What about expert witnesses? Do the three Sharia judges know anything about medicine? A "confession" in a foreign language? That is preposterous on its face. Bah! It is all very hypocritical. A Palestinian in an Israeli court would have a better chance than this girl.

Well...accidents do happen. It's only that if they happen by an outsider ,he/she is blamed for it. But if it happens by parents, then ...not much happens (atleast not in the middle east or third world countries)

My mother threw a high heel at me when I was 4:scared:
It fractured my skull and I had 5 stitches.

My aunt, threw her 5 years old son on the bed with anger
and his arm came off the joint

My brother fell out of the car :enough!: through the door (which was not properly closed). My mother was driving and was taking a U-turn. He was only 3 yrs. If the card behind us hadn't put emergency brakes......:enough!: :enough!: :enough!:

So accidents happen a lot..!!

I will freely admit I have a hard time marshalling a feeling of benevolence for the Saudis. There is the madrasa funding in Pakistan, there is the historic winking at jihadiism, there are the 19 from 9-11 and over 2/3 of the homicide bombers in Iraq now are Saudi nationals.

And I have no interest in being seen as some populist savior of the oppressed. It just bugs me.

Good to hear Saudi women can drive now (from a human rights perspective not from a road safety perspective:sunny: ). Is that everywhere?

Here is an update:

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38624

DEATH PENALTY-SAUDI ARABIA: Legal Aid for Maid - After Close Shave With Sword
By Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Jul 22 (IPS) - The dramatic reprieve for a condemned Sri Lankan housemaid won by lawyers, beating a Jul. 16 deadline for filing an appeal in the Saudi Arabian courts, has focused the international spotlight on a closed justice system which condemns people to death without legal representation at their trials.

Rizana Nafeek, a 19-year-old migrant worker, was sentenced to death on Jun. 16 for allegedly intentionally killing a four-month-old infant who choked to death while she was giving it a midday bottle feed in May 2005. Nafeek had only one month to file an appeal or she would have been executed by sword and her body put on public display to deter future offenders.

Her beheading would have been one of more than 100 carried out so far this year in a country currently seeing a surge in state killings, according to Amnesty International (AI). Many of those executed are foreigners. Saudi Arabia has a population of 27 million, including 5.5 million foreign nationals. Last year it executed 39 people, 26 of them foreigners, according to AI.

Nafeek's last-minute reprieve was secured by the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) which launched an international appeal campaign "under extraordinary circumstances". The Commission, with the approval of the Sri Lankan embassy in Riyadh, stepped in to pay the legal costs to a Saudi law firm to challenge the death sentence in court.

"We have filed the appeal by the due date," Sri Lankan deputy minister of foreign affairs Hussain Bhaila told IPS in Colombo, before flying out to Riyadh at the end of last week on a mercy mission. With him on the flight were Nafeek's parents and a local Muslim leader.

This assembled mission was a separate approach to save the maid who now had a stay on execution. They hoped to meet with the dead infant's parents and through various intermediaries secure a pardon. They also hoped to visit the maid in jail.

"It is not going to be easy meeting them (the parents)," Bhaila said, adding that they had already refused to see the Sri Lankan ambassador. Under Saudi law only the parents can grant a pardon, something they had declined to do when the death sentence was passed.

The drama over the international efforts to save Nafeek’s life illustrates the near-impossibility of other condemned migrant workers to engage Saudi lawyers -- even if they are aware they have this right. Nafeek comes from a poor Sri Lankan family and had been working in Saudi Arabia at her employer’s home just two weeks when the tragic incident occurred.

The legal costs of filing her appeal were first put at Saudi Riyal 250,000 (about 66,000 US dollars). The Sri Lankan embassy eventually negotiated a 28,000 dollar reduction.

Although the appeal can now go ahead, lawyers are still waiting for Saudi officials to send them essential documents, including a copy of the final judgement. Even a week before the appeal deadline, the Sri Lankan embassy issued an "urgent request" for this and other key documents needed by lawyers.

With the appeal being filed, Nafeek for the first time since her arrest has legal representation. At her trial she had no independent legal advice, according to the AHRC. This was also the case in the trials of four Sri Lankan migrants who were executed for armed robbery in February this year, according to AI.

The cases are similar in many respects and may be representative of others involving capital trials of foreign workers in Saudi Arabia.

Nafeek was put under duress to sign an incriminating statement that was used to condemn her for strangling the child to death. "At the police station 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 of murder by strangulation were filed in court," according to the AHRC.

In the case of the four Sri Lankan men who were beheaded, they told judges at the trial that they had been beaten by the police during interrogation. One of the four, Ranjith de Silva, in a telephone interview with Human Rights Watch a week before his execution, said he understood that but for his incriminating confession he might not face the death penalty.

De Silva had also said that the judge at his trial did not inform him that he could appeal or provide any of the four a copy of the judgement, according to Human Rights Watch. One of the four is believed to have thought he had been sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment, according to AI.

The conduct of the Saudi judges is under scrutiny in the Nafeek case. According to the AHRC she is said to have informed the judge that she was 17 at the time she arrived in Saudi Arabia in 2005 -- not 23. Her date of birth on her passport had been falsified by the employment agency. This would have meant that she was just 17 at the time of the infant's death and an underage girl.

But the judge failed to call for a medical examination to verify this, according to rights organisations. The Sri Lankan embassy in a statement on Jul. 8 has confirmed that there is a certified copy of Nafeek's birth certificate confirming that she was born on Feb. 4, 1988.

Saudi Arabia sets the minimum age for employment at 22 years, according to Suraj Dandeniya, President of the Association of Licensed Foreign Employment Agencies in Colombo.

The practice of falsifying documents is widespread. According to some estimates, between 10 and 25 percent of Sri Lankan Muslim women who go abroad to work are underage and succeed with bogus documents and passports. There are currently some 300,000 Sri Lankan migrant workers in Saudi Arabia, a third of whom are Muslim women.

"All officials involved in this illegal process are culpable … not only the recruiting agent," said Dandeniya.

David Soysa, director of the Migrant Workers' Centre, a long-standing Colombo-based institution which supports migrant workers, believes Nafeek’s case illustrates just how unprepared and untrained many migrant workers are for their duties in Middle East households. The Sri Lanka Foreign Employment Bureau, the main foreign employment promoting arm of the government, provides only 12 days of training.

"There is a serious problem about lack of proper training of migrant workers. The maid didn't know how to burp a child when choking occurs during feeding, which is common. A trained maid would have handled this easily," he said.

He also believed that this was a case of child trafficking. "The offenders should be punished," he said.

Saudi Arabia is a signatory of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This bans any member nation from executing anyone for a crime committed while under the age of 18 years.

It is not known when Nafeek's case will come before the appeal courts.

Interesting perspective from the BBC


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4137898.stm



Saudi Arabia's job market rethink
By Bethany Bell
BBC News, Riyadh

The new King of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah, has said one of his priorities is to deal with the problem of unemployment in the kingdom.

Saudi women walk out of a shopping mall in Riyadh
Shopping at the capital's malls is an expensive pastime
For many years, oil-rich Saudi Arabia did not have to worry about joblessness.

But now the population is growing rapidly and the wealth is being spread thinner.

Several million foreigners work in Saudi Arabia but the government is trying to replace them with Saudi workers.

But Saudis do not always want to accept the jobs on offer.

Yassin, 27, a hotel receptionist, is a pioneer - one of just a handful of Saudis working in the hotel industry.

Twenty years ago, in the boom period of oil wealth when millions of foreigners were hired to do the jobs the locals did not want to do, it would have been unthinkable to see a Saudi working in such a menial position.

Saudi-isation

And even now it is unusual. Yassin, the son of a farmer, says his friends made fun of him when he said he wanted to work in a hotel.

"They laughed at me the first time. But when they see me make money they change their minds," he said.

"I hope to be a big manager in this hotel. I am working on it. I am focusing on my job.

I try to make my managers very happy with me and try to do my best. I like to work in this industry - I like it."

The Saudi authorities would be encouraged by Yassin's attitude.


All of our young people would like to be managers, which is absolutely nonsense
Khaled Al-Maeena, Arab News editor-in-chief
They know the oil riches will not last forever and that the economy has to diversify. Meanwhile the number of school leavers - and unemployment - is rising.

At his palace in Riyadh, the governor of the city, Prince Salman bin Abdel Aziz, said the plans are in place to employ more Saudis in the job market.

It is a scheme known here as Saudi-isation.

"We have millions of foreign workers. We need to do two things to provide work opportunities," he said.

"One is to find appropriate jobs - and these are available - and the second is to qualify Saudi youth to work in all sectors of the kingdom."

Aiming too high?

That may be difficult. Many young Saudis have grown up in luxury, seeing their parents getting well paid, high status positions.

Other jobs - from builders to shopkeepers - were done by foreigners, mainly from Asia.

But these days, partly because of the very high birth-rate in Saudi Arabia, there are not enough good jobs to go round.

It is a fact young Saudis, such as 23-year-old Fariz, are reluctant to accept.

Saudi shopping mall
Young Saudis are now considering taking up menial jobs
Fariz, who graduated with an arts degree several months ago, likes to spend his evenings in a decadent coffee bar and nightclub in central Riyadh.

He has already turned down a number of job offers.

"I am waiting for a job - as a teacher. But I refused all offers so I need to wait my next job," he said.

Fariz can afford to wait - funded by the government's generous hand-out system for new graduates.

They receive up to $13,000 (£7,250) when they finish studying - the money generated from Saudi Arabia's vast oil wealth. But in the long run, with the booming population, these pay-outs will be untenable.

Shopping sprees

Khaled Al-Maeena, editor-in-chief of the Arab News newspaper, says the unrealistic expectations of many young Saudis have to be controlled.

"All of our young people would like to be managers, which is absolutely nonsense," he said.

"People have to start somewhere. Everybody would like to go ahead, but if you instil the work ethics I think it would go a long way to alleviate our suffering - because we are suffering.

"What our people should do is to learn from others - we should take as a role model Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Korea - I think these are examples we can take."

It is not just men who are having to join the labour market.

A number of Saudi women have responded eagerly to the job opportunities that have opened up over the past few years. Some of them need the money.

But for some women from conservative families, there is no question of getting a job.

Manal, a wife and mother, says she enjoys spending time and money at one of Riyadh's most expensive shopping malls, the Mamlaka.

Many young Saudis have grown up expecting luxury as a matter of course. The question is whether they can get the jobs to pay for it in future.

Oh...alright...I admit it...there probably are some nice Saudis <kicks sand with shoe>.

I restrict my comments to the self-indulgent Saudis, and the jihadists, and the Al Quaeda boosters, and the Al Queada hardcores and the royal family.

<generalization filter off>I still think they treat foreign workers like cattle.

So, today it comes to light the woman is a Muslim.

She ought to be pleased she was tried under Sharia law instead of a Western style court.

-

If i would have power i would sent out the foreigners and i would leave the saudis to do the entire jobs alone. Lets see how they will speak then.

format_quote Originally Posted by PurestAmbrosia

good ole Joe.. with another episode of noetic mal-absorption .. lay of the John Barleycorn before you write pls. So we can make sense of what you are trying to Allege!

It is beginning to look like all non-Muslims on the forum either have their brains ecysted with pork tapeworm larvae or addled by alcohol.

That seems rather an offensive generalization to me. kay:


I think Joe raises a good point. Here is a Muslim girl sentenced to have her head separated from her young neck by three Saudi (probably old) men (whose language she does not speak) without the aid of an advocate.

Seems a rotten deal to me.

There is a reason a group of English noblemen gather under an oak about 800 yrs ago.

format_quote Originally Posted by north_malaysian

How many Saudis want to work as maids, sweepers or construction workers?

Exactly thats the point. They will work, when the garbage will fill up their yards and the kids will smell bad, they will do it.