'Grossly disproportionate': Sri Lanka sends delegation to save Tamil worker Sivarasa Anojan from Saudi death sentence

Sri Lanka has dispatched a five-member delegation to Saudi Arabia in a last-ditch effort to save the life of Sivarasa Anojan, a 27-year-old Tamil migrant worker who faces the death sentence over a Facebook comment. The team, which includes parliamentarians Faiszer Musthapha and Upul Kumarapperuma along with an official from the Attorney General's Department, was to travel on Tuesday to explore legal avenues for an appeal to the Saudi Supreme Court. Anojan, a trainee construction-site safety officer from Natpiddimunai in Kalmunai, was first convicted by the Criminal Court in Al-Ahsa and sentenced to five years in prison with a fine of three million Saudi riyals, roughly 800,000 US dollars. The sentence followed a Facebook comment he posted during a heated online dispute that Saudi authorities judged insulting to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. The dispute began during this year's Pada Yatra pilgrimage to Kataragama, after a stray dog that had walked hundreds of kilometres with pilgrims became a social media sensation. Then the appeal backfired. Anojan's lawyer asked the court to reduce the five-year term; the public prosecutor had also appealed, seeking an enhancement of the sentence under Sharia. On September 17, the appellate court recharacterised the offence and imposed the death penalty. Sri Lanka's foreign minister Vijitha Herath has said the appeal judgment gives no sign that the enhancement came because of the prosecution's appeal, but the outcome has shaken the island nation. Anojan's family says he was failed at every step. His brother Sivarasa Hamsithan said Anojan had no lawyer during the trial and that the embassy, though informed, sent no one. Former foreign minister Ali Sabry has urged the Saudi authorities to grant clemency, calling the reported death sentence "grossly disproportionate, inhumane, and unacceptable." Sabry noted that Anojan removed the comment within minutes and issued a public video apology, and that even the original five-year term for an offensive social media remark was excessive. "Justice must leave room for compassion," he said. "Anojan deserves the chance to return to his family and rebuild his life." Sri Lanka's Foreign Ministry says it is closely following the case through its embassy in Riyadh and in coordination with the Saudi embassy in Colombo, and that diplomatic engagement with the Saudi authorities is continuing. The ministry has not, however, formally confirmed the death sentence in writing; the embassy is still awaiting the court's official written judgment. Minister of Mass Media Nalinda Jayatissa has said diplomatic-level efforts are under way to seek a reduction of the sentence. The case has become a grim lesson for the hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans, and South Asians more broadly, who work in the Gulf. A moment of anger typed into a phone, from soil governed by laws the worker may barely understand, can end in a courtroom where the stakes are life itself. Whether quiet statecraft or public pressure saves Anojan now, his ordeal has already exposed how little protection migrant workers have when a post crosses a border and becomes a capital case.