Beheading of migrant worker Rizana Nafeek in Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia beheaded Rizana Nafeek January 9th for a murder the Sri-Lankan maid allegedly committed when she was 17. Saudi Arabia is one of three countries, as well as Iran and Yemen, which have executed people for crimes they committed as minors the last five years according to statistics by Amnesty International. Rizana Nafeek was in 2007 convicted for the murder of an infant, whom she was caring for in 2005. According to Human Rights Watch she made a confession under great distress, which she later retracted stating that the baby died in a choking accident while drinking.
The Execution of Rizana Nafeek, which violates International Human Rights Law, has brought to attention the lack of judicial support for migrant workers in Saudi Arabia, and Sri Lanka’s lack of legal support for migrant workers.
An unfair trial
“Today’s beheading of a Sri Lankan domestic worker in Saudi Arabia for a crime she allegedly committed while still a child shows once more that the Gulf kingdom is woefully out of step with international standards on the death penalty” Philip Luther of Amnesty International stated on the day of the execution.
Saudi Arabia is a state party to the Convention on the Rights of Children (CRC) and is thus prohibited from imposing death penalty for crimes done by people under the age of 18 years. If there is doubt about the age of an offender the alleged must be treated as a minor if the prosecutor is not able to produce evidence stating the contrary. In the case of Rizana Nafeek the passport she entered Saudi Arabia with states that she was 23 years old, while her birth certificate and a school register, both seen by a BBC-reporter in 2010, on the other hand confirms that she only was 17 years old at the time of the alleged murder. Human Rights Watch has reported that two recruitment agents have been sentenced to two years prison for the falsification of her documents. Amnesty International further reports that Rizana Nafeek was not allowed to show this documentation on her trial in 2007, nor did she have a translator who adequately could translate from Arabic to her mother tongue Tamil. Further did she not have a lawyer representing her, and she made the “confession” after physical assault.
Migrant workers’ vulnerability
The case is also a sad example of the lack of rights and the vulnerability of migrant workers in Saudi Arabia. According to Amnesty International many of the executed in Saudi Arabia the latest years are migrant workers. Migrant Rights have suggested in the case of Rizana Nafeek that this not only because of Saudi Arabia’s flawed legal system offering few rights to the migrant workers, but also due to Sri Lanka’s lacking of “ (…)any support mechanism for incarcerated nationals precluded the opportunity for a fair trial.” It is suggested that the Sri Lankan government took action to late by only intervening after she was sentenced to death for certain and the only possibility was an amnesty, rather than helping her in proving her innocence during the trial through a lawyer, who could have pointed out that the death penalty for a juvenile is illegal according to Conventions on the Rights of Children.
The tragedy has been condemned by a number of NGO’s and is a sad reminder of the vulnerability of migrant workers and that executions of juveniles are still taking place in the Middle East. This is contrary to appeals against death penalty and for respect of human right of life by the Arab coalition against the Death Penalty .
