Mon, 2013-01-14 13:45 — editor
By K.T.Rajasingham
Colombo, 14 January, (Asiantribune.com):
Asian Tribune urges Sri Lanka to join with
international community to urge Sri Lanka to bring about international pressure
on Saudi Arabia to bring about a resolution against Saudi Arabia in the 22nd
regular session of the Human Right Council session (25 February-22 March 2013)
condemning Saudi Arabia for beheading in the name of religious law and
defending judicial killings.
Asian Tribune urges Sri Lanka to initiate a resolution
against Saudi Arabia in the 22nd regular session of the Human Right Council
session (25 February-22 March 2013) condemning Saudi Arabia for beheading in
the name of Sharia law and defending judicial killings.
It is time Sri Lanka joins with Indonesia and
Philippines in drafting a resolution assisted by international community to
bring about strictures against Saudi Arabia for its condemnable and beastly
acts of beheading human beings in the name of a Wahabist invented religious
law.
Earlier, the intensity of the criticism by Asian
Tribune and of the international community and media organizations has forced
the Saudi Arabian Government led by its Wahabist King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al
Saud to defend the beastly and barbaric killing of Sri Lankan housemaid Rizana
Nafeek citing excerpts of the case proceedings while there is already call to
release the courts proceedings for perusal.
Already Muslim Council Sri Lanka which represents 102
premier Muslim organizations in the country had demanded Saudi authorities to
release the copy of the judicial proceedings for Sri Lankan experts to study
and advise all those seeking employment in Saudi Arabia to be well advised on
how to avoid similar situations in the future.
Muslim Council of Sri Lanka is the first organization
to demand for the record of the courts proceedings to Sri Lanka to study.
(The full text of their press release is given at the end of this news report.)
Asian Tribune believes that Saudi Arabia has a duty in
faith and if they want to be transparent and if they want to be fair by the
family of the legally executed Rizana Nafeek that when you convict an innocent
girl and if you have a proceeding and bury her after execution without giving
her body and if you feel that you are convinced that what you have done is
justifiable according to the international norms and good practices, then you
don’t need to be afraid to release the proceedings of the courts to authorities
in Sri Lanka, because it is a demand from the Council of Muslims which is the
more accredited body where there are more than one hundred organisations of the
Muslims are amalgamated in it. This is their single joint request.
Asian Tribune is of the opinion that Countries which
allow their nationals to Saudi Arabia should have an urgent meeting and
immediately to demand, but you can’t demand of a sanction on the Wahabists
regime, then that will be counterproductive as they want care because they are
only worried about USA only and nobody else. Sanction move will be nothing for
them.
What they can do as a first step that these countries
must get together and tell the Saudis that look unless you have an
internationally accepted standard we cannot send our housemaids or any females
to your country. Give them about six month’s time from that date.
During this period we must get the international
community to give them the draft rules and laws make it work. Because they will
not do that as they might be thinking that would be violating their
independence and all that.
So then thereafter lay the ground for all those
countries which decided jointly to stop sending their females to that country.
That will be a punishment on Saudi Arabia.
Because in case if Sri Lanka alone stop sending
housemaids to Saudi Arabia then there are other countries ready to double their
quotas of sending housemaid - like Bangladesh, like Pakistan may be India - I
don’t know whether India sends their women as Housemaids, so others will gain
at Sri Lanka’s expense.
Saudia is a dictatorship of the King and they are not
accountable to anybody except to the President of United States. They are
definitely accountable for US but not to anybody else. They don’t care a damn.
Though Sri Lanka Government is getting other forms of
assistance, getting aids for their projects from Saudi Arabia, so they are
thinking of those matters perhaps. But it is more important the country must
think of the welfare of its citizens who are exposed to extreme punishments
without the concentration of mitigating the confidence.
Therefore it is important that Sri Lanka organize to
bring about international pressure on Saudi Arabi by joining with Indonesia and
Philippines at least to bring about a resolution against Saudi Arabia in the
forthcoming 22nd regular session of the Human Right Council session (25
February-22 March 2013) condemning Saudi Arabia for adopting in the name of
religious law beheading and defending judicial killings.
Given below the full text of the press release by the
Sri Lanka Muslim Council urging for the Courts Proceedings:
PRESS RELEASE: 09.01.2013
We learn with great sadness the decision of executing
Rizana Nafeek, rejecting all appeals for clemency. Rizana was born and brought
up in a family that was struggling in poverty in the Eastern Province of Sri
Lanka.
It was only the desperate desire to take her family
out of poverty that made Rizana, then a minor, to go to Saudi Arabia as a maid.
At the time she entered into employment she was an under-aged girl completely
unfit to be entrusted with the task of looking after a four month old baby.
We find it shocking that any parent would have
entrusted his child to the care of another child. The unfortunate incidents
that led to the death of the infant child are, in our view, a direct result of
the negligence of the parents who entrusted their infant to the care of Rizana,
while she was employed in cooking and cleaning for the parents.In these
circumstances we express shock and dismay at the failure on the part of the
infant’s parents to take responsibility for their action and pardon Rizana - an
option that was available to them under Islamic law and which option of
pardoning is strongly encouraged in the Quran. Whilst the Holy Quran provides
for the implementation of the death penalty for murder, treating murderas an the
circumstances of the infant’s death clearly do not amount to murder under well
known principles of Islamic Shariah. In any event it is the Shariah that
provides for pardoning even the guilty at the instance of the victim’s kin and
states that forgiveness is better than punishment.
The Holy Quran furthermore, urges in Verse 15:85 to
overlook (any human faults) with gracious forgiveness. Thus we see the
implementation of the death penalty as going against the spirit and the letter
of Islamic law. In fact the execution also brings to light another instance of
the selective implementation of Saudi laws,for it is curious how an unmarried
young female unaccompanied by a male, was permitted to enter, live and work in
a country that insists on females entering Saudi Arabia to be accompanied by a
male within the prohibited degree of marriage.
We express our deep disappointment and disbelief that
the parents of the infant whose death Rizana was held responsible for, did not
avail the Quranic provisions of mercy and forgiving overlooking the negligence
if any of this poor and youthful worker and also the Saudi Arabian Government
for maintaining a regime with regard to migrant labor that does not meet any
standards set out in Islamic Shariah law and international laws. The Muslim
Council of Sri Lanka representing 102 premier Muslim organisations in the
country wish to appeal to the Saudi authorities to release a copy of the
judicial proceedings for Sri Lankan experts to study and advise all those
seeking employment in Saudi Arabia to be well advised on how to avoid similar
situations in the future.In this moment of extreme grief our thoughts and
prayers are with the family of Rizana Nafeek and we pray that Almighty
Allahgive them solace and grant Rizana Jennathul
Signed on behalf of Muslim Council of Sri Lanka -
S.A. Asker Khan - President
Firdouse. N.M. Ameen - Secretary
- Asian Tribune -
