Thousands of Lankans in Saudi clutches

Thousands of Sri Lankans both men and women including ex-Air Force officer Thungasiri and Asitha from Kadawata, languish in Saudi Arabia prisons. A large number of them sex slaves and only intervention by the US or the United Nations can save them, according to popular film actor and UNP MP, Ranjan Ramanayake.

In this scenario, Ramanayake aims to hand over a letter to the US Ambassador in Sri Lanka appealing for the US to move in all these tragic cases with emphasis on Thungasiri and Asitha’s fate.

“Towards this end I will be seeking the blessings of the Maha Sangha and join me in this mission,” he says with all earnestness.

Saying that Thungasiri is behind bars having already been subject to several lashes only because he had a ‘pirith nool’ tied to his hand and a Buddha statue with him in his bedroom and Asitha because a cartoon of Prophet Mohammed had appeared on his Facebook page, Ramanayake is quick to cite what he calls a valid example in support of what he calls a roaring and iron fisted sex trade Lankan women are subject to there when he says, “There are local agents pedaling underage women from this country and very recently an agent was arrested with two underage Muslim schoolgirls while they were being taken in a trishaw to be sent to Saudi Arabia. Mind you, this happened quick on the heels of Rizana’s cruel and tragic beheading.”

“There are 600 Sri Lankans mostly women imprisoned in a place called Oleviya. They are used as sex slaves and tortured. Besides that in general there are thousands of Lankan migrant workers in Saudi cells facing various trumped up charges by the Saudi authorities who do not follow the Sharia law as set out by Prophet Mohammed, but instead operate a practice of beheading and hanging people other than whites,” says Ramanayake who claims that they will listen only to someone like Barack Obama or Ban ki-moon.

The handsome and popular actor politician known to take a special interest in the welfare of Sri Lankan migrant workers in the Middle East and who has visited so many languishing in prisons, voices much concern particularly as to the ultimate fate of Thungasiri and Asitha. He fears that the same fate that befell Rizana Nafeek could befall them.

Raped and tortured

“You cannot trust Saudi authorities. In the Rizana issue the Saudi Ambassador in Sri Lanka assured our authorities that everything was okay with her and that she would be released soon. But the opposite happened. It is a Sharia law by a barbaric people. They have double standards. They have never punished a single white because they fear the US and are beholden to Western countries. But they look down on Sri Lanka and consider our country as the source of feeding their sex trade. It is rampant. Thousands of our women and men are suffering there. Women are tortured and raped unabated because they know that Sri Lanka is dependant on them for their oil and financial aid. They won’t talk to our ministers. When the Minister of Foreign Employment, Dilan Perera had tried to speak to the Saudi Foreign Minister over Rizana, he did not come to the phone. If Dilan has spoken, ask him to produce the tapes. There aren’t any. That is how they look at us,” goes on Ramanayake in all earnest that something should be done to bring our brothers and sisters out of the doom they are in.

Ramanayake says that Muslim leaders cannot talk to the Saudi authorities on behalf of Sri Lanka migrant workers because “they get millions of riyals for themselves and their mosques besides giving financial aid to the government”. In that scenario a known fact is that Sri Lanka is the No.1 country sending sex slaves to Saudi Arabia and our authorities turn a blind eye because expatriates are the biggest foreign exchange earner amounting to an estimated US $ 6 bn’

Royal Family atrocities

In supporting his argument about Saudi double standards, Ramanayake singles out several instances where certain members of the Saudi Royal family had committed offences in other countries and conspicuously got away scotfree; like Saudi Prince Bin Fawaz detected by the French authorities trying to smuggle two tons of cocaine to Colombia.

“Saudi Arabia had its way getting the prince freed under the threat of stopping all oil exports there if the prince was not discharged. Also there was the case of a Saudi princess trying to walk out of an US motel without paying a bill amounting to US $ 9520. Another instance of double standards where Westerners are spared in Saudi was of an American called Thomson speaking about Christianity, but no action taken because the Saudis are scared of the US. But Thungasiri cannot do that and neither Rizana or Asitha. In the case of Rizana the Sharia court overlooked the fact that the mother of the infant had broken a compulsory requirement that a two-year-old infant must be breastfed by the mother. But in this case the mother had left the baby for bottle feeding by the servant and gone shopping. According to that law the mother should have been hanged for not complying,” he argues while pointing out that there are four reasons to behead an offender under Sharia law namely sexual assault, homicide, armed gang robbery and working against Islam
Besides Ramanayake, in the case of Thungasiri his parents accuse the local authorities of being silent on the matter.

Lackadaisical foreign missions

Meanwhile, the lackadaisical attitude of our foreign missions, which was conspicuously manifested through the tragic Rizana Nafeek case, only goes to add to the miseries of those ill-fated men and women and their families back home. And that scenario continues in the case of Thungasiri, Asitha and the several thousands, Ramanayake stressed.

Meanwhile ‘The Nation’ got the typical predictable answer from a Foreign Employment Ministry official – its Secretary K. Amunugama when we asked whether no appeal had been made to the Saudi authorities in respect of Thungasiri, he replied negatively “We have instructed our ambassadors to look into the interests of Sri Lankan expatriates in Middle East countries.”

More often than not getting through to anybody at the Ministry of Foreign Employment is like finding a needle in a haystack from the minister downwards. Telephones just keep buzzing only to draw a blank.

Source: The  nation (Sri Lanka)