RIZANA AND THE FALLOUT
Reportedly, the elders
of Sri Lanka's considerable Muslim community are on the verge of
making a formal proposal to the government to prohibit, by law,
Muslim women going to the Middle East in search of Dirhams and
Riyals. No doubt this is an immediate reaction to the beheading
of the housemaid Rizana, who was sentenced to death by a Sharia
court for the alleged crime of murdering an infant in her care.
Community-wise or otherwise, it is extremely wise that there
is agitation, incrementally, to ensure that Sri Lankan women are
not prey to rapacious employment agents and heartless employers
that exploit the poverty of these females. But, this however is
a vexed issue.
Any ban of women going to oil rich countries as domestic
aides should be across the board, and should not be confined to
any one category of persons in a given community, but perhaps
the recent agitation by the Muslim religious elders and the
leaders of the community is a start. The dignity of the women
going for employment is paramount, as is their safety of course.
In that context, the first meaningful lesson came from the
deceased girl's mother, who in a gesture of admirable equanimity
and self-assurance, declined any financial aid from any family
or organization based in Saudi Arabia as compensation for the
death of her daughter. This should gladden people's hearts as it
proves beyond a shadow of doubt, that these people who send
their daughters out of the country in search of a meagre pot of
gold, nevertheless place the highest value on the dignity of
their kin in alien climes, among strange people -- though often
the poor are invisible to the media, and are prejudged as being
uncaring of any human fallout.
But the Rizana affair is certainly not an exclusively 'Muslim
issue' in any sense and it is advisable that all Sri Lankans
close ranks with the Muslim community, and show support for the
current agitation for a moratorium on Sri Lankan female domestic
workers leaving for employment in Saudi Arabia, and other Arab
countries.
Such a closing of ranks should also be seen as a display of
shared values between two communities that are coexisting as
they did for hundreds of years, despite the fact that there are
intermittent tensions beneath the surface in this longstanding
partnership of amity. Just the other day, the Minister of
Justice Rauff Hakeem had made a rather pained statement that
aspersions cast on the Muslim community should stop, and that
all ethnicities should exist side by side or words to that
effect. Sri Lankans couldn't agree more with the minister with
regard to these sentiments that will be echoed across the length
and breadth of this country, but any notions of imminently
eruptible tensions between the two communities are also vastly
exaggerated.
There are some points of discontent in certain quarters and
in a happy marriage between two disparate communities, this is
normal, and to be expected. But that these very minor irritants
are anywhere near reaching boiling point is nonsense, if anybody
entertains such a notion -- and not that it is being said here
that the Minister is being alarmist.
But on the issue of reactions to the Rizana killing, there is
a wonderful opportunity to reassert common cause, and therefore,
the majority community leadership in Parliament should perhaps
explore in detail the proposals made by the Muslim elders to
enforce a moratorium on future female domestic workers embarking
for jobs in the Middle East.
The issue is multi-faceted of course, and there is some
measure of patronizing elitism also, to the aspect of elite
elders of the community taking decisions that eventually effect
the poorest of the poor, no matter which community is involved.
In simple terms, there will be other prospective housemaids
who will say, why are we deprived of the opportunity to better
ourselves by the rich and the comfortable, when we are prepared
to take the risks? Of course that will not be a tenable argument
considering the risks involved, but however, let there be a new
inter-community discourse on this multi-layered and complex
issue aimed at reaching a satisfying and consensus based outcome
in the near future. |