Petition Letter to His Majesty King ‘Abdullah Bin ‘Abdul ‘Aziz Al-Saud
Lanka Solidarity calls for the immediate release of Rizana Nafeek, a Sri Lankan national currently awaiting execution in Saudi Arabia. We invite you to sign and share this document, which we write to show our solidarity with her and with those who have worked for a fair and open hearing of her case.
We note especially that per the Convention on Domestic Workers and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Rizana cannot legally be sentenced to death; Saudi Arabia is a party to both the former document, which protects domestic workers, and the latter document, which forbids the death penalty and life sentences for crimes committed by those under the age of 18.
Rizana’s case clearly falls within these parameters. By releasing her, Saudi Arabia will be honoring its own important commitments to protect workers, women, and children.
Case Background
On May 22, 2005, Rizana Nafeek was arrested for the alleged murder of a four-month-old child under her care in Saudi Arabia. In June 2007, the High Court in Dawadmi sentenced Rizana to death. Her execution order was stayed pending an appeal to the Supreme Court. However, in October 2010, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence. Rizana remains in prison to this day, and as soon as King ‘Abdullah Bin ‘Abdul ‘Aziz of Saudi Arabia ratifies her sentence, she may be executed.
Rizana was 17 years old at the time of the incident. After training with Sri Lanka’s Bureau of Foreign Employment, she began working for a family in Saudi Arabia. Her training did not include child care, and she was not informed in advance that child care would be among her duties. Nevertheless, her employers instructed her to look after a four-month-old infant. Tragically, on May 22, 2005, the child died while under Rizana’s care.
From the time of her arrest to the order for her execution, Rizana’s case has been subject to multiple irregularities and injustices. At the time of her arrest, she had no legal representation or contact with Sri Lankan consular officials in Riyadh. There is evidence that she was not provided with adequate Tamil translation services during her legal proceedings. Furthermore, her initial confession that she strangled the child appears to have been obtained under duress. In a statement that she prepared in Tamil in 2007, Rizana states that she was physically assaulted by Dawadami police in detention and forced to provide this confession. Throughout the entire case, Rizana has stated that the child accidentally choked during a bottle feeding, yet the police has not conducted a standard postmortem to determine the child’s cause of death.
Finally, although she has been imprisoned since May 2005, Rizana did not have access to any legal counsel until after Saudi Arabian courts found her guilty in June 2007. Even then, the Asian Human Rights Commission had to raise funds for her motion to appeal, which she filed in July of that year.
Call for Justice and Critical Inquiry
Like thousands of other Sri Lankan women, Rizana Nafeek sought employment in Saudi Arabia as a domestic worker to support her impoverished family in Muttur, a village in war-torn eastern Sri Lanka. In order to protect such women, who are often vulnerable to abuse and discrimination, Sri Lanka and all Gulf states—including Saudi Arabia—voted in favor of the Convention on Domestic Workers on June 16, 2011. Saudi Arabia is also a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which explicitly prohibits the death penalty or life sentences without parole for crimes committed by those under the age of 18.
Lanka Solidarity opposes the use of the death penalty, especially for crimes allegedly committed by children, and especially in circumstances in which the accused was afforded such inadequate legal process and protection.
Lanka Solidarity supports the pleas for clemency and appeals for pardon made by the Asian Human Rights Commission, Amnesty International, and other human rights organizations. Lanka Solidarity also supports the pleas for pardon and efforts to release Rizana made by the Sri Lanka’s Foreign Employment Promotion and Welfare Minister, Dilan Perera, and other members of Parliament, though none of these efforts have resulted in her release.
The loss of a child is a painful experience for any parent. We sincerely express condolences to the parents of the deceased child. In doing so, we join calls from civil society organizations in and outside Sri Lanka that have urged them, as Rizana’s former employers, to justly intercede to pardon Rizana and secure her release.
We urge Sri Lanka to take appropriate steps to work with officials in Saudi Arabia and the Sri Lankan Embassy in Saudi Arabia to address the unjust facts of this case that could rightfully exonerate Rizana from any criminal charges. As labor-sending and receiving states respectively, Sri Lanka and Saudi Arabia heavily depend upon migrant labor and foreign remittances to maintain their national economies. In 2010, remittances to Sri Lanka were estimated at nearly $4 billion dollars, remitted by 1.8 million workers, of whom more than half were female migrant workers. In spite of their much-valued work, migrant domestic workers like Rizana continue to face gross rights violations, including unpaid wages, forced confinement, and psychological, physical and sexual abuse. In signing this letter, we also urge Sri Lanka and Saudi Arabia to guarantee the rights and safety of migrant women, and uphold the legal and political commitments they have made to domestic workers.
Sign Petition at Change.org Here:
http://www.change.org/petitions/pardon-and-release-rizana-nafeek-sri-lankan-domestic-worker-who-is-set-to-be-wrongfully-executed-in-saudi-arabia
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