Last week, a Nepali domestic worker, a Yemeni migrant worker, and a citizen were beheaded for different crimes. This distribution seemingly indicates a macabre kind of fairness within the legal system; two males, one female, two migrants, one citizen, each beheaded in accordance with the same distortion of Islamic law used to impress fear into the Kingdom’s residents. But while citizens do not escape the inequity of the Saudi justice system, discrimination renders migrants even more vulnerable to harsh penalties; even ignoring the often problematic context of their initial arrest, detained migrants often lack regular access to a lawyer or translator.
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 04:14:27 +0000