Won’t accept help from killers of my daughter: Rizana’s mother
FRIDAY, 18 JANUARY 2013
“I am not willing to accept any assistance from the state of Saudi Arabia or any individual of this country who killed my daughter,” Rizana’s mother has said.
“Several institutes and individuals have offered to help me to provide house but I strongly ask those who are linked with the murder of my daughter not to come with gifts to us. Everything has happened according to the God’s wishes,” she said.
She also appealed not to disgrace her daughter by publishing wrong photographs as that of Rizana’s, as some media have done.(Amadoru Amarajeewa)
“Several institutes and individuals have offered to help me to provide house but I strongly ask those who are linked with the murder of my daughter not to come with gifts to us. Everything has happened according to the God’s wishes,” she said.
She also appealed not to disgrace her daughter by publishing wrong photographs as that of Rizana’s, as some media have done.(Amadoru Amarajeewa)
Special Feature: A Spark of Unity for Sri Lanka?
Tim King Salem-News.,comJan-17-2013
Tim King asks activists, writers, and a Member of Sri Lanka’s Parliament, if the widespread support for a Muslim maid in Saudi Arabia eased other tensions.
Rizana Nafeek’s passport. Courtesy: groundviews.org
(SACRAMENTO, CA) - I frequently joke about how an alien invasion from outer space would bring the human race together onto the same page very quickly. I hope the united struggle that ultimate failed to save Rizana Nafeek, but seemingly put all Sri Lankans onto one page, can lead to a microcosm of that idea taking place on the island nation.
Many people tried…
Most people who pay attention to national news, know that Rizana Nafeek, a Sri Lankan woman employed as a maid in Saudi Arabia, was beheaded over the death of an infant she is accused of killing.
The young woman had no past behavior indicating she was dangerous, and she and her advocates maintained to the very end that she had no direct involvement in the baby’s death.
But good luck selling that one in Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally that enforces Sharia Law which makes all women second-class citizens, and that is putting it mildly. It means, among other things, that the word of a female maid, a foreigner at that, has little weight or value against a member of a wealthy Saudi family.
In Sri Lanka, bitter tensions between minority ethnic Tamils and Sinhala Buddhists simmer in the wake of the country’s terrible civil war that ended in 2009 with tens of thousands of Tamils mass murdered by their own government.
Rajasingham Jayadevan, a well known Tamil activist in London, shared his thoughts on the government’s role as the hopeful yet failed savior of Rizana Nafeek. Ultimately, the young maid was a Tamil, but also being Muslim made her even more unique as a Sri Lankan, and that likely played a part in her demise. “You can say that the government showed lack of interest because she is a Muslim. If it was a Sinhala Buddhist Wimal Weerawanse likes would have gone on the fast in front of the Saudi Embassy. Saffron robed ball heads would have gone to town on the issue.” He cites that there are no protests or outcries over Nafeek’s death, and even the Muslim leaders associated with the government are playing ball.
A drastic need for unity, mutual respect and peace is sorely lacking. The Muslims of Sri Lanka are an even smaller minority living amongst the minority Tamil and majority Sinhalese populations.
Taking it a step farther, even if she did kill the baby, she did not deserve this spectacle of a death. Have you seen it by the way? You might as well put yourself through it to fully appreciate the impact. It isn’t too bad, the camera records the image from a distance and about the only thing you see is the swing of the sword and the actual beheading at the end. Last year we published video of drug cartels in Mexico using a chainsaw to remove the heads of two men. This isn’t anything close to that.
But is it one country? The whole civil war hinges around the fact that Tamils claimed a large section of the north coastal region as the breakaway state of Tamil Eelam. Today it is an occupational zone where Sri Lankan soldiers are stationed in large numbers. But politically and definitely militarily, and certainly occupationally, it is one country today.
Sri Lanka, land of a recent tsunami, that preceded the tragic Tamil Genocide, and the defeat of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) Tamil Tigers themselves, who literally terrorized the Sri Lankan military and then fought to the very end.
The point though is that the war did end and while a strong desire to repopulate Tamil Eelam exists, and Sri Lanka is accused of endless war crimes, each day still comes and goes and the population should take this example of the beheading of the young girl, and consider how the government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) did take steps to save her, unsuccessfully of course.
So what do Tamil activists and writers think about the idea of an event like this tragic beheading, in relation to building unity in Sri Lanka? I asked Visvanathan Sivam to explain how the girl’s Muslim heritage relates to that of the Tamils, who are primarily Hindu, followed by Christians.
“The maid is a Tamil Muslim. The Muslims who live in the North-east are Tamils, but like the Muslims elsewhere, they consider themselves Muslims first and Tamils last. The same as the Muslims in UK - they are Muslims first and English last; nothing on earth can change them,” Sivam said.
I asked if it seemed possible, from a Tamil perspective, to see any hope emerging from this brief bout of common support from all Sri Lankans, to hear once again that, “nothing on earth will bring the Tamils and Sinhalese together”. Sivam says the Sinhalese government is all out to reduce the Tamils to an absolute minority in their own homeland. As for the Muslim woman who was killed in Saudi Arabia, Visvanathan Sivam says the government has to make some noise to please the Muslims, but that after some time, everything will go back to square one.
“To be frank with you I don’t have any hope of any solution in Sri Lanka, as the government has no will to find one. We just go on doing our work and leave the rest to destiny,” Sivan added.
Brisbane human rights activist Brian Senewiratne pictured
with South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Brisbane Times
with South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Brisbane Times
I turned to the most well known and accomplished Sinhala activist for Sri Lankan Tamils, Dr. Brian Senewiratne, in Melbourne, Australia, to get a sense of what he thought. “As for Unity in Sri Lanka,” he said, “It’s too late for that. Beheading or no beheading, Sri Lanka cannot be one country. It is not ‘if’ but ‘when’ that separation will occur”.
Strike one, as we say here in the land of baseball. I had to smile when reading Dr. Senewiratne’s first sentence, “Tim… I have no idea why you think that the well-known barbarians in Saudi Arabia (and several other countries like Singapore) will lead to unity in Sri Lanka.”
Dr. Senewiratne was raised in a Buddhist culture and both Hindus and Buddhists believe in not killing any living thing. Now they don’t all follow that, just as members of all other religions seem to have their violent side and inability to follow religious teachings, but the good doctor males clear how little use he has for the violent Wahhabi culture of U.S. ally Saudi Arabia.
“Death by hanging, beheading, stoning or any other is more a reflection of barbarism – a return to a barbaric past. As a member of Amnesty International from day 1 (1961) when Amnesty was launched in Trafalgar Sq (I was a newly qualified doctor who was working a couple of tube-train stops away), I have been totally against capital punishment. I have seen more than one person executed only to find several years later that someone else was responsible”.
When asked whether he believes the Sri Lankan government has what it takes to dare to challenge the Saudi government, he replied, “No, it has too much oil – to hell with human rights”.
A Tamil advocate who is always helpful to my reporting efforts, Sandy Vadi, points to an article written by Fil Munas in September, titled ‘Shed a tear for Rizana’ “…bringing communities together is not possible with the current regime and its loyal bunch. Some of them including Rajiva Wijesinha, Minister Vasudeva Nanayakkara (at) one time aroused vast expectations among youth and students and spoke widely about Tamil autonomy, equality and self-determination few decades ago”.
- countercurrents.org/munas300912.htm
- countercurrents.org/munas300912.htm
Vadi recently sent photo of posters in Colombo printed only in Sinhala accusing TNA, Chief Justice as Tamil Tiger traitors trying to destabilize the country. “This kind of language in ‘communal lines’ has been there for six decades for political purposes and now it is sold very well to poor Sinhalese population”.
Rajiva Wijesinha
This activist references Rajiva Wijesinha, a member of the Sri Lankan parliament and presidential advisor, who was also the former head of the Sri Lankan peace secretariat and the secretariat to the ministry of human rights.
I wanted to gauge Wijesinha’s thoughts on this development, so I asked him whether this type of event bolsters the unity of all Sri Lankans. He cited my statement to him, “Surprise has been expressed with regard to the execution of Rizana that all sides came out in favor of saving the girl, Sri Lankan Muslims, Tamils, and plenty of Sinhalese,” saying:
“I found such surprise strange, but realize that understanding of the actual situation in Sri Lanka has been distorted by not just the years of conflict but by the presentation of Sri Lanka by expatriates”. He rarely misses an opportunity to downplay the turbulent relations in Sri Lanka, and was no exception in this case.
“Within Sri Lanka there are hardly any animosities based on race itself, and most Sri Lankans treat people of other communities simply as human beings”.
He does not deny that there are resentments based on what he calls “perceptions of discrimination” and instances of violence, and this in turn has led to resentment of what he refers to as “terrorist activity”.
“Tamils have felt oppressed by a majoritarian political dispensation that they felt hijacked the state, and this can translate into the feeling that Sinhalese have supported such a dispensation, but this hardly ever precludes willingness to interact positively with individuals”.
Wijesinha says the situation is different abroad, where memories of discrimination, and of three outbreaks of violence, have fuelled deep bitterness.
“This is exacerbated by reportage that concentrates on negatives – just as on a smaller scale some Sinhalese expatriates are conscious only of terrorist activity. Appetites that feed on themselves will not be able to see the suffering of individuals like Rizana objectively. Within Sri Lanka however we continue to interact, in schools, in offices and in commercial life without registering or bothering about the race to which those we interact with belong”.
Noel Vethanayagam in Chennai, suggests an excellent article for those seeking to further understand the situation, written by Tisaranee Gunasekera in Sri Lanka in The Guardian dated Tuesday, 15th January 2013. The title of the article is ‘Rizana Nafik, Bandaranayake and the Lankan Reality’. Vethanayagam commented on the government’s involvement in the series of attempts to save the girl’s life.
“As to what I think of the issue, the Govt was not sincere, they would not even pay the fees of the lawyer who was to defend this poor girl. As you know remittances of these poor workers bring the second most foreign exchange to Sri Lanka next to tourism. The Govt was not genuine because of the fear that any action would result in the loss of foreign exchange”.
He points to the fact that the agency which recruited her to work as a nanny did so knowing she was under-aged. In fact according to reports, the agency falsified her passport in order to send her to Saudi Arabia. “The Govt did not even bother to bring her body back to SL as this will create tension in the Muslim community in Sri Lanka.” The sadness of Rizana Nafeek’s mother has drawn a great deal of attention in Sri Lanka. Her family hoped for several years that they would see their daughter again, alive.
