Saudi appeals court sentences Sri Lankan Tamil worker to death over Facebook comment

Sivarasa Anojan, a Tamil migrant worker from Natpiddimunai, Kalmunai, in Sri Lanka's Ampara District, has been sentenced to death for blasphemy by an appeals court in Saudi Arabia. At first instance, the Criminal Court in Al-Ahsa had given him five years in prison and a fine of three million Saudi Riyals. His family says the harsher sentence came on Thursday (17), when the appeal was decided.

From a pilgrim dog to a criminal charge

The affair is said to have its roots in this year's Pada Yatra, the Hindu pilgrimage to Kataragama held every year. Devotees gave the name Subramaniam to a stray dog that followed the pilgrims for hundreds of kilometres, and the animal became an online sensation. When a video surfaced showing a young Muslim man kicking the dog in Kalmunai, he was arrested and subsequently released on bail. The footage also triggered a bitter online row, in which inflammatory comments targeted various religious communities. According to Anojan's relatives, a Facebook comment he wrote at the time was later reported to the Saudi authorities and formed the basis of the charge against him.

Doubts over how the appeal was managed

In a statement issued on Friday (18), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Employment, and Tourism said it was monitoring the case via the embassy in Riyadh, working together with the Saudi Embassy in Colombo. The statement made no reference to the death sentence.

Shanakiyan Rasamanickam, the Batticaloa MP who leads the ITAK Parliamentary Group, urged intervention at the highest diplomatic level. According to him, the family was encouraged to lodge an appeal even though legal advice secured by the embassy judged its prospects to be extremely low. The relatives deposited Rs. 1,890,766 in legal fees into an account connected to the ministry's Secretary. Although the appeal was lodged on 24 August, the ministry's letter passing it on to the family bears the date 16 September. Attorney Adlan Abdullah Al-Subaie is listed as counsel in the appeal, yet the family says another lawyer represented Anojan in court, and they never received that person's name or contact details.

Rasamanickam intends to raise several questions in Parliament: who selected that lawyer, how the fees were used, and whether the consular management of the case broke down.

“A Sri Lankan citizen’s life is reportedly at stake. Every available legal, diplomatic, consular, and humanitarian avenue must now be pursued.”— Shanakiyan Rasamanickam

Also on Friday (18), Anojan's family published a video appealing to the authorities to step in.