The news out of Saudi Arabia, as reported by CNN, is that the government has executed a Sri Lankan woman named, Rizana Nafeek.
Ms. Nafeek had traveled to the country back in 2005. She was there to find a job to help support her family, which had been devastated by the horrific tsunami which hit the island after the earthquake in Indonesia. She was hired by a Saudi family and promptly told to bottle feed their baby. The family charged that her response to the assigned chore was to strangle the child. Ms. Nafeek claimed it accidentally choked to death on the milk she was feeding it.
Since then she's been sitting in a Saudi prison convicted of a capital offense. Last Wednesday officials used a sword to cut off her head in the small town of Dawadmi.
The Sri Lankans had been appealing her sentence. They had said that when the child died Nafeek was only 17 years old and since the Royal Kingdom had signed onto the International Convention on the Rights of a Child it was illegal for them to condemn her to death. Apparently they produced a birth certificate to prove their contention. They also pointed out she was only qualified to be a maid and house cleaner, that she wasn't trained to be an au pair, or nanny.
The Saudis claim that her passport, an official document, showed her to be 21 years of age in 2005, which gave them every right to chop off her head.
Several organizations expressed their anger at the execution. Amnesty International said the beheading proved how, "woefully out of step" the Saudi justice system is. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement saying he was "dismayed" by the action. The Sri Lankan president, who had personally appealed to Saudi King, Abdullah twice to issue a stay, if not a pardon, called his ambassador home from Riyadh.
The Saudis got a little testy at all this anger and dismayed stuff. They issued a statement that said, "The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia rejects any interference in its affairs, or in the provisions of its judiciary under any justifications." In other words we can decapitate anyone we damn well please. They have also told Sri Lanka that officials at the "highest level" appealed to the child's family for clemency and asked them to demand a cash, "blood money payment," in exchange for Nafeek's life, but the family refused to do so, leaving their hands tied.
They've been curiously mum on charges that Nafeek was refused legal counsel before her trial began and that she'd been beaten and coerced into signing a confession. Well, that whole innocent until proven guilty thing is generally ignored by everyone anyway, even here. Quick, name five white Americans who thought O.J. didn't off Nicole before his trial started.
It is reported that last year 79 people were executed in Saudi Arabia, 27 of them were non Saudis. In my book that officially makes the Kingdom one tough place to work if you're a visitor.
It is unknown why Rizana Nafeek's passport listed her age at 21 in 2005. The obvious, but, unsubstantiated, answer would be that she faked her age for one reason or another. Perhaps in her desperation to help her family she was attempting to circumvent child labor laws. After all the Kingdom had signed that treaty agreeing to protect the basic rights of all children including those who are part of the labor force. Unfortunately for her it gave the Saudi judicial system all the wiggle room it needed in order to carry out her execution.
I wish I could be outraged by things like this now days. I wish I could, like the Secretary General, be dismayed. However, the truth is I'm numb to the point that it takes something gruesomely spectacular to truly touch me any more. Newtown did. Aurora did. The war zone also known as Chicago does.
When I read about the beheading of a Sri Lankan woman in a medieval outpost like Saudi Arabia it simply doesn't phase me like it should. Yes, I'm less of a human being because of it. We all are.
But, in the end, honestly, that is what we've become.
Less.
1-14-13
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