10 Jan 2013
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She was just 17, when a fateful accident happened in which the baby left in her care died. When the news of her ‘crime’ broke through and there were appeals to and fro, sometime in 2007, I had just had my daughter who was very delicate when it came to feeding off the bottle. If I, a mature woman who has already had kids, was careless with the position of feeding, the holding of the bottle and the baby’s head at the right angle, there was a good chance she could get choked on the milk easily.
And we were talking of a 17-year-old teenager with no previous experience of feeding a baby. At 17, Rizana should have been in school, not tending to a baby in a land where she knew no one and did not speak their language.
Today, her parents must mourn a daughter whose life was cut down too short, too soon, too tragically, a travesty of justice for not just Rizana but all Sri Lankan women.
Whom to blame
For a moment, you wonder whom to blame- the Saudis whose archaic laws often violate all norms of accepted human rights, the parents who did not have the brains to watch over a very young baby left in the care of a novice maid and then demanded justice eye-for-an-eye style, the Sri Lankans – the job agent who faked her identity or her parents, who chose to send a young girl, who should have been in school, as a way of escape from their abject poverty.
Who is to blame for Rizana’s death? Can we learn anything from it – can we make sure at least that Sri Lankan women who toil away in the Middle East will not have to suffer her fate once again – or will this all be repeated some day?
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Rizana’s death is but another incident in a country where women are raped, murdered and molested on a regular basis. Just last week alone, a police constable killed his police constable girlfriend and a father tortured and killed his one-year-old daughter. The week before that, a man strangled and set fire to his wife and two children in the hope of marrying his new found girlfriend.
A woman’s – or a man’s life does not amount to much in Sri Lanka today. And so, a life taken in distant Saudi Arabia may not jolt us out of the stupor we are in, culture-wise. Yet, it can and should rattle us enough to stand up and take note.
Price paid for dollars
It is estimated that 1.8 million Sri Lankans are employed abroad, of whom 45 percent are women. Most of these women are employed in a domestic capacity in households in the Middle East and in countries such as Singapore. The country and their families need the foreign currency these migrant workers send home – they are the biggest source of revenue for us. But what price are we paying for keeping them there?
The exploitation of Sri Lankan women who choose to go in search of employment as housemaids has been going on for years – Rizana’s death, as shocking and blatant as it seems to the civilized world – is not the first nor will it be the last. Other women have been tortured and beaten before being either killed or packed off home. Yet, poverty is as the Sinhala idiom puts it, a bull without the tail and will continue to drive women to seek better prospects even at the risk of losing a limb or even life.
Many believe that a consistent and a well-coordinated diplomatic approach could have saved Rizana from execution. She had been on Saudi Arabia’s death row since 2005. Leave alone being on death row, staying imprisoned for almost eight years in a strange country would have been traumatic enough for Rizana. She did not speak Arabic; there have been doubts cast by humanitarian agencies on the court room process that involved a ‘sheep herder’ translator who apparently could not make out the difference between Tamil and Arabic.
All in all, it is clear that Rizana did not get a fair trial. For the Saudis, it seems compassion and forgiveness were not criteria to be looked at when evaluating an accident committed by an underage minor. It was clearly a hopelessly one sided case that cast all aspirations on Rizana as the perpetrator. It ignored all appeals for clemency and compassion in sparing her life. In the end, it did what it set out to – to execute her.
Miseries to continue
The job agent who forged Rizana’s documents to falsely declare she is older than she actually was should be brought to book in more ways than one. Although he has been sentenced to imprisonment and may have finished serving his two-year sentence by now, he is not the only one out there. As I write, there are hundreds of such fraudulent agents who do not hesitate to lure unsuspecting women towards employment abroad touting false information. They should be dealt with firstly before dealing with the women themselves.
During her so-called trial, Rizana did not have access to legal counsel. Although international law prohibits sentencing anyone under the age of 18 to a death penalty, obviously such parameters do not apply to Saudi Arabia where she was sentenced to be beheaded.
Rizana could have been saved. Even if we, as a collective society, could not save her, what lessons can we learn from her death?
We will continue to send women to Saudi Arabia long after Rizana because simply put, we need the money. Our children may face incest and abuse in homes left vacant by migrant mothers but we need the dollars to keep us going.
So, our women will continue to go out in search of employment. We cannot afford to or do not want to empower them here at home; so, off they go. And that’s the way the cookie crumbles in a country which used to have hallowed principles governing it many centuries ago, when a woman is said to have been able to walk alone from one end to another, fully resplendent in gold jewellery.
Rest in peace Rizana – May Allah give you junnathul firdouse!
(Nayomini, a senior journalist, writer and a PR professional can be contacted at
[email protected])
