January 15,
2013 - 10:02 | Aljazeera
Life for the Nafeek
family seems to have lost its meaning.
Its eldest daughter
Rizana was beheaded in Saudi Arabia. It was her punishment after being found
guilty of murdering a four month old infant in her care.
For her parents and
younger siblings it ends seven years of waiting, desperately hoping for a
pardon. They seem lost, not knowing what to do next.
Fareen Nafeek, Rizana's
mother, is distraught. She see-saws between despair that her daughter was a
victim of a grave injustice, and a belief that she is still alive and will one
day come home.
The crippling poverty is
obvious when I visit their home in Muttur in North East Sri Lanka.
"My child went
abroad so that we wouldn't starve, so we could clothe and educate her younger
brother and sisters," She says.
The house consists of
mud walls and a thatched roof; there is no running water. Parked in a nearby
shed is a bullock cart which is the family's only means of income; Rizana's
father gathers firewood for a living.
Rizana was 17 years old
when she left Sri Lanka, her passport altered by unscrupulous job agents to
show she was 23.
People I met in Rizana's
village Muttur say this is a common with underage youngsters. Some speak of an
under-aged neighbour who had made it across, encouraging others to do the
same.
The entire experience
for the shy, soft spoken teenager must have been daunting. A new country, a
language she did nor understand, a new environment, an employer who, according
to her mother, mistreated her.
"My daughter was
harassed and beaten. She was made to eat her meals in a toilet bowl."
The execution has drawn
worldwide criticism, which has brought an angry response from the Saudi
Kingdom. A government spokesman said Riyadh “deplores the statements made over
the execution of a Sri Lankan made who had plotted and killed an infant by
suffocating him to death.”
Her family rejects the
verdict saying she was a victim of a grave injustice and punished for a crime
she did not commit. "Rizana told me she was taken to the desert, beaten
and told she could only return to Sri Lanka if she signed a confession,"
her mother said.
Rizana had no idea that
she was going to be executed. I try to understand the contrast between the
premeditated killing claimed by her trial, and accounts of how she collected
together a prison allowance she received and bought sweets and a blanket to
send home to her family.
A social worker who
worked closely on the case says a textbook of errors saw justice denied to the
teenager. She says Nafeek was forced to sign a confession in a language she did
not understand, the translator was a casual worker whose native language was
not Tamil which Rizana spoke, and most importantly, there was no recognition
that she was a minor.
Activist say the Sri
Lankan authorities should have done more to fight for Rizana. The government
says it pursued all avenues to have Nafeek released from death row. Back
in her village most people don't accept this and are angry that she died in
vain.
For her family, offers
of help keep coming. But in flashes of stabbing reality her mother asks
"What's the point of money or a better house if my child back is
dead?"
