Saudi Arabia has increased the sentence of Anojan Sivarasa to death after an appellate court granted prosecutors’ request to try the Sri Lankan migrant worker under Sharia law over a Facebook comment. The 24-year-old had first been sentenced to five years in prison and a fine of 3m Saudi riyals before the case was escalated.
That ruling is why his name is being searched now. His family and Sri Lankan officials have been pressing for clemency after the case moved from a cybercrime case to a capital one, and Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath said an appeal to reduce the punishment was rejected. The change in sentence means the dispute is no longer about jail time and a fine, but about whether Saudi Arabia will carry out a death sentence against a foreign worker.
Sivarasa was arrested in July after a comment he made in Tamil was brought to the attention of his employer and Saudi officials. He promptly deleted the post and posted an apology video, but that did not stop the escalation. Saudi prosecutors filed their appeal on 17 September, asking that he be prosecuted under Sharia law instead of the country’s cybercrime legislation, and the appellate court accepted that request and increased the punishment to death.
The case has cut deep in Sri Lanka because it now turns on a statement made online and on a legal shift that left little room for a lighter outcome. Rasamanickam Yogalakshmi made a tearful plea for mercy, saying: “I plead for mercy for the wrongs committed by my son. Please forgive him and send him back to us.” Hamsidan Sivarasa also said people in Saudi Arabia knew nothing about the matter and that it was individuals in Sri Lanka who sent emails to the company where his brother worked.
The Sri Lankan government has instructed the family not to make further public statements while diplomatic efforts continue, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Sri Lanka says it is taking all available steps to assist him. Sivarasa’s family met President Anura Kumara Dissanayake at the Presidential Secretariat on 21 September, and senior Buddhist leaders and Hindu religious leaders later handed over a memorandum calling for urgent state intervention. The unanswered question now is whether Saudi Arabia will act on the death sentence at all, because no execution date has been announced and the family said it had no update after 28 September.
