Sri Lankan Migrant Workers & The Case Of The 45-Year-Old Married Mother
By Imtiyaz Razak –December 9, 2015
Dr. Imtiyaz Razak
Sri Lanka Experiences: Neo-liberalism, the rise of migrant workers and the case of the 45-year-old married mother
Sources suggest that a Saudi court has decided to reopen the case of a Sri Lankan woman who was sentenced to death by stoning for adultery. The 45-year-old married mother of two was convicted in August because she was allegedly participated in the adultery with the man, also from Sri Lanka. The fact is that “the man was sentenced to only 100 lashes while the woman was sentenced to death by stoning.” The latest development related to the 45-year-old married mother of two is rather positive. “Deputy Foreign Minister Harsha de Silva told parliament that an appeals court in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital, has decided to hear the case again following pleas by Sri Lanka’s foreign ministry. “Based on the advice of the lawyers and our (foreign ministry’s) intervention on the matter, a decision has been reached to reopen the case,” de Silva told lawmakers.”
Now it is the time to discuss the question why do those people go to countries such as Saudi Arabia in the Gulf? The answers are not so complicated. We know some answers. One answer is associated with poverty, and countries like Sri Lanka’s inability to create equal conditions for all people to seek equal economic opportunities. Some blamed Saudi wahabbism. Actually, it is not Wahabi barbarism, as alleged by Dr. Ameer Ali, killed 45-year-old married mother of two, but the very neo-liberal economic system that Sri Lanka has been practicing contributed to econonomic marginalization and polarization.
When sufferings occur, when killing hit our society, when inhumanity dominate our polity, we rather than targeting the roots of all evils, tend to blame the results and actors associated with the results. The fact is that if Sri Lanka is able to provide safer economic security and conditions for all to seek upward economic mobility, it is very unlikely Sri Lanka’s economically marginalized would choose to go out of Sri Lanka to win their bread and butter. In plain words, it is Sri Lanka’s neo-liberal economic system contribute to the sufferings. Sri Lanka’s neo-liberal economic system has history of discriminating it’s own people. Rebellion by the JVP mainly from the south both in 1971 and 1987 rooted in economic marginalization of Sinhalese. The rise of Sri Lanka’s brutal ethnic conflict, which killed more100, 000 since it’s inception, had been rooted in Sri Lanka’s economic modernization program engineered by Sinhala elites and politicians from 1956. Now the LTTE, which challenged the state violently, either silenced their guns by themselves or they were forced to silence their guns, but the fact is that there was and is economic origin to Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict.Read More