Sri Lankan worker sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia over a Facebook comment
Anger as man sentenced to death for Facebook comment
Anojan Sivarasa, a 24-year-old Sri Lankan migrant worker, was sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia for a Facebook comment deemed blasphemous. He was initially given five years and a fine, but an appeals court raised the sentence. His family hasn't heard from him since September 28. Humanists U.K. and the Sri Lankan government are pressing for his release.
Everyone has the right to speak freely about religion, and no one should ever face punishment for doing so, much less be put to death.
- NDlurker
Religious extremism is a mental illness and has no place in government.
>Saudi Arabia is among the world's most prolific executioners. According to Amnesty, at least 175 people had been executed in the kingdom this year as of 5 October, most of them foreign nationals, including at least 94 people from more than 20 countries. It has no written penal code, leaving many offences and punishments to judges' interpretation of Sharia, and broad provisions in its counter-terrorism and cybercrime laws have been used to impose long sentences for social media posts.
This should be widely publicized. No foreigner is safe.
- Athanase000
Here are my thoughts.
1. Don't commit crimes. If saying or writing a given phrase is a crime in the country you reside in, don't say it and don't write it. This poor man was apparently aware of this, given he deleted his comments a few minutes after writing it. Unfortunately, too late: in the meantime, some extremists had the time to screenshot his comment and send them to his employer.
2. Related, how did Saudi Arabia attorney establish that the comment was authentic? Nothing could be easier than doctoring a screenshot. Did they get Facebook to cooperate and confirm this comment was indeed posted by this man? The articles don't mention this.
3. I hope Sri Lanka and other countries will put pressure on Saudi Arabia to get this man a pardon.
4. It would be very easy for Facebook to implement automated censorship of comments that would cause their author to be killed, imprisoned, or fined. This is obviously censorship, but useful censorship. With Jev or similar models you could do it for a few hundreds of cents per comment, if that, and no doubt Facebook could do it for even cheaper.
- infinite_spin
When I search google, using his name, the AI generated content at the top works.. if I ask what comment he left, suddenly the AI generated content stops working.
- zaik
This is of course wrong, no matter what the comment was, but it is strange that the article does not say what the comment was.
- rramadass
Intolerant Saudi Arabia and its inhuman treatment of non-muslims. Why the world puts up with it is beyond me.
The problem was a trivial one; there was a dog in a non-muslim religious procession which was wantonly kicked by a muslim man. As any normal empathetic human would, this person wrote a facebook post condemning it in somewhat strong terms which may have had some religious flavour which he later deleted and apologized for.
The above is what is being tried under blasphemous laws by the Saudis. Where is the outrage from the international media, human rights organizations and the larger world?
We are living in the 21st century, for goodness' sake!