SMALL stones litter a petitioners’ table outside a government office in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital. Each jagged shard symbolises the rocks that may soon be used to kill a Sri Lankan migrant maid convicted of adultery in Saudi Arabia, who has been sentenced to death by stoning in April. The fate hanging over the as-yet-unnamed woman—a 48-year-old, married mother of two—has provoked mounting rage in Sri Lanka, whose diplomats only learned of the case in August. Her alleged lover, an unmarried Sri Lankan man, is to be heavily flogged.
For years Sri Lankans have helped to meet foreign demand for cheap domestic workers. This has benefited the country, as it has Asian neighbours such as Indonesia and the Philippines. Sri Lankan migrants sent home $7 billion in 2014, equivalent to 9% of GDP; remittances to the Philippines now amount to around $27 billion, much of it from domestic workers. For many women, scrubbing foreign floors is a route out of poverty.
Yet dangers are rife, particularly in Saudi Arabia, which hired nearly 40,000 Sri Lankan maids in 2014. In 2013 a Sri Lankan worker in Saudi Arabia was convicted of killing a baby...Continue reading
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