Saudi Arabia beheads domestic worker convicted of killing baby

[struggle4progress]

By Emily Alpert
January 9, 2013, 11:27 a.m.

Saudi Arabia on Wednesday beheaded a Sri Lankan woman who was convicted of killing a baby, putting the former domestic worker to death despite her young age at the time of the alleged crime.

The Sri Lankan government had pleaded with Saudi officials to spare Rizana Nafeek, who was 17 and had been working in the country just a few weeks when a baby died in her care in 2005. She was among the hundreds of thousands of migrants who flock to Saudi Arabia from countries such as Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Philippines, toiling as domestic workers who cook, clean and care for children.

The young woman claimed the infant had choked to death while drinking from a bottle, retracting an earlier confession she said was obtained under duress, according to rights groups. Nafeek had no attorney to defend her until she had already been sentenced to beheading, they said ...

Executing someone for crimes committed as a minor is a violation of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, of which Saudi Arabia is a part. The country has nonetheless executed convicts for crimes committed when they were younger than 18, some as young as 13, according to Human Rights Watch ...

http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-saudi-arabia-executes-domestic-worker-20130109,0,2121983.story

[struggle4progress]

1. Saudi Arabia Executes Sri Lankan Maid

January 9, 2013, 4:41 pm
By CHRISTINE HAUSE

... Amnesty International said in a statement that as a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Saudi Arabia is prohibited from imposing the death penalty on people under the age of 18 at the time of the alleged offense, and that if there was doubt, the courts were required to treat the suspect as a juvenile until the prosecution can confirm the age.

After the sentence was handed down in 2007, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch had called on the Saudi authorities for clemency, but the sentence was appealed and then later ratified by the country’s Supreme Court. King Abdullah signed off on it this week, Amnesty International said.

According to information gathered by Amnesty International, Ms. Nafeek said she was not allowed to present her birth certificate or other evidence of her age to the Court of First Instance in 2007. Amnesty International said it also appeared that the man who translated her statement to the court might not have been able adequately to go between Tamil and Arabic.

She also had no access to lawyers either during her pretrial interrogation or at her trial in 2007. Amnesty International said that although she initially confessed to the baby’s murder during her interrogation, “she later retracted and denied it was true, saying she had been forced to make the ‘confession’ under duress following a physical assault" ...

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/saudi-arabia-executes-sri-lankan-maid/

[MADem]

2. Domestic worker? More like slave. Poor child. nt

[struggle4progress]

3. Sri Lankan maid Rizana Nafeek beheaded in Saudi Arabia

9 January 2013 Last updated at 14:25 ET

... In a statement, the Sri Lankan foreign ministry said that President Rajapakse and the government deplored the execution "despite all efforts at the highest level of the government and the outcry of the people locally and internationally".

A Sri Lankan opposition MP who campaigns for Sri Lankan workers abroad, Ranjan Ramanayake, described the Saudi government as "dictators" who would never execute Europeans or Americans, only Asians and Africans.

The MP also said the government in Colombo had done little to ensure Rizana Nafeek's legal rights - a claim denied by Sri Lankan government officials.

The parents of Ms Nafeek had repeatedly appealed to King Abdullah to pardon her. Her father is currently in hospital, officials say, and her mother is too distressed to talk about the execution ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20959228

[struggle4progress]

4. Outrage over beheading of Sri Lankan woman by Saudi Arabia

By Jethro Mullen, CNN
updated 10:01 AM EST, Thu January 10, 2013

... Rizana Nafeek arrived in Saudi Arabia in 2005 ...

She spent her first few weeks in Saudi Arabia working as a housemaid to earn money to support her relatives back home, who had been displaced by the massive tsunami in the Indian Ocean the year before.

Nafeek spent the next seven years in Saudi jails as she was accused, charged, convicted and sentenced to death in the killing of her employers' four-month-old son ...

In 2012, Amnesty said it had recorded at least 79 executions in the country, 27 of them of foreigners ...

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/10/world/meast/saudi-arabia-sri-lankan-maid/?hpt=wo_c2

[lunatica]

5. How horrible!

[struggle4progress]

6. Sri Lanka recalls envoy from Saudi after maid beheaded

COLOMBO | Thu Jan 10, 2013 11:58am EST

(Reuters) - ... &quot This is) to show our displeasure for not hearing the government's appeal to save Rizana Nafeek," Karunatilake Amunugama, secretary of the External Affairs Ministry, told Reuters. "He (the envoy) has been recalled with immediate effect." ...

The infant's mother rejected a request to forgive the maid, which is the most important criteria in considering the release of a murderer in Saudi Arabia, said a top Sri Lankan government official, speaking on condition of anonymity ...

Hundreds of Sri Lankan women in the island nation's capital Colombo protested against Nafeek's execution on Thursday and said the government should have done more to seek her release. More protests were planned for Friday.

The maid's mother asked the government to help her to bring her body back to Sri Lanka, local media reported. But government officials said she had been buried in Saudi Arabia ...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/10/us-srilanka-saudi-maid-idUSBRE9090XR20130110

[ellisonz]

7. Our good business partners...

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

10. Yep. Plenty of US kisses of friendship on Saudi cheeks.

Ass cheeks that is.

[struggle4progress]

8. Beheading causes outrage

5:30 AM Friday Jan 11, 2013

... The case once again throws a spotlight on the vulnerability of migrant workers in the country and their treatment under its legal system where human rights groups say access to adequate translation and legal assistance is severely limited.

Rights groups raised concerns about the fairness of the trail as Nafeek was denied access to legal representation and adequate translation.

Like many of the Gulf's migrant workers Nafeek's parents say they were forced to send her overseas to supplement the struggling family's income. They say the employment agency forged her documents to make it appear she was an adult and could legally seek employment in the oil-rich Gulf state.

Her passport says she was born in February 1982, but rights groups claim she was not allowed to present her birth certificate or other evidence of her age to the court during her trial in 2007 ...

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10858395

[struggle4progress]

9. Sri Lanka deplores Saudi execution of maid

Posted 10 January 2013, 13:40 AEST

Sri Lanka's parliament has held a minute's silence in honour of Rizana Nafeek a domestic worker who was executed in Saudi Arabia on charges of killing a baby in her care in 2005 ...

As late as last week president Mahinda Rajapakse had written a letter to the king of Saudi Arabia requesting a reprieve for the maid.

Admiral Samarasinghe says all other means from the ministerial to religious levels were also explored in an attempt to stall the punishment being executed ...

In the last couple of weeks the Sri Lankan bureau of foreign employment announced its intention to reduce the number of women seeking to go overseas as maids by some 90 percent ...

http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/2013-01-10/sri-lanka-deplores-saudi-execution-of-maid/1072264

[struggle4progress]

11. ILO Says 53 Million Domestic Workers Have No Legal Protections

BY Maya Shwayder | January 10 2013 12:33 PM

A new report out on Thursday from the U.N.’s International Labour Organization reveals that 52.6 million people around the world who are employed as domestic workers lack sufficient legal rights and protections, and are often subject to harsh work environments, extremely insufficient wages, and mistreatment at the hands of their employers.

This is not a new problem. Last year in September, the U.N. received the two ratifications it need to approve a new treaty, the Convention on Domestic Workers, to give such laborers worldwide the same basic legal protections that other employees receive following years of reports of inhumane treatment of nannies and maids ...

The Convention is being enforced as of 2013, but they still came too late for Rizana Nafeek, the 24-year-old Sri Lankan domestic worker who was beheaded on Wednesday near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, after being convicted of murdering her employer’s child in 2005, when she was 17.

83 percent of domestic workers worldwide are women like Rizana: mostly from Asia, the Pacific, Latin America, and the Caribbean, the ILO report said, who immigrate to the Middle East or more developed countries, sometimes under questionable legal circumstances ...

http://www.ibtimes.com/rizana-nafeek-wasnt-alone-ilo-says-53-million-domestic-workers-have-no-legal-protections-1006902

[Boomerproud]

12. I wouldn't go near that place no matter how desperate I was.

Horrific story.

[zellie]

13. Of course we have to respect the Saudis

Doesn't matter how heinous the Saudis are... No representation , a kangaroo court and then unspeakable beheading... of a teenager no less.

When it come to the Middle East any vile belief or barbaric action are given a pass or ignored all together. We don't want to offend them.



Simply barbaric.