A Facebook argument should never become a death sentence.
Yet that is precisely where the case of 24-year-old Sri Lankan migrant worker Anojan Sivarasa has landed. A young man working thousands of kilometres from home is facing execution in Saudi Arabia after an appellate court convicted him of blasphemy against Islam and Prophet Muhammad over a social-media comment made during a religiously charged dispute in Sri Lanka.
The central question is not whether Anojan’s words were offensive. They may or may not be. The question is whether any religious offence can justify taking the life of the person who committed it.
The answer should be an unequivocal no.
And this is precisely why the case of Anojan Sivarasa should become more than a diplomatic crisis involving one Sri Lankan migrant worker. It should become the catalyst for a much larger campaign against blasphemy laws that criminalise speech, extinguish freedom of expression and create a legal weapon that can be deployed not merely against genuine religious offence, but against personal enemies and political or ideological opponents.
Because once the State gives someone the power to have another person imprisoned or executed for insulting a religion, it has also created an extraordinary opportunity for that law to be weaponised.
From a social media argument to a death sentence
The circumstances surrounding Anojan’s case make the punishment even more disturbing.
The controversy reportedly began following an incident during a Hindu pilgrimage in Sri Lanka. Footage of a young Muslim man kicking a dog following Hindu pilgrims circulated on social media, triggering a heated religious argument. During the ensuing exchange, a user made derogatory remarks about a Hindu deity.
Anojan responded in Tamil with an allegedly insulting remark about Prophet Muhammad.
He then deleted the comment and posted an apology.
But the matter did not end there. An Islamist took a screenshot and brought it to the attention of his Saudi employer and the authorities. Anojan’s brother, Hamsidan Sivarasa, has said that it was individuals in Sri Lanka, Islamists undoubtedly, who contacted the company where his brother worked.
The Al-Ahsa Criminal Court initially sentenced Anojan to five years in prison and imposed a fine of three million Saudi riyals. The case subsequently took a dramatic turn when Saudi prosecutors sought to have him prosecuted under Sharia law rather than cybercrime legislation. The appellate court accepted the request and imposed the death penalty.
A young migrant worker had gone from an online argument to facing execution.
Sri Lanka must fight until Anojan is home
The Sri Lankan government must now exhaust every legal, diplomatic and humanitarian avenue to prevent the execution.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has met Anojan’s family and assured them that his government would spare no effort to secure a pardon. A four-member Sri Lankan legal delegation is travelling to Saudi Arabia to meet Anojan’s local lawyers and determine what further legal options are available.
That is welcome, but it must be only the beginning.
Colombo should pursue every available appeal, seek clemency directly from the Saudi leadership, maintain constant diplomatic engagement and request assistance from countries that have influence in Riyadh. Sri Lankan diplomatic missions should keep the international spotlight on the case, while the government should ensure that Anojan has the strongest possible legal representation.
The objective cannot merely be a reduction of his sentence.
The objective must be to bring Anojan Sivarasa home alive.
His family has reportedly had no communication with him since September 28. His devices have been confiscated, and the family remains uncertain about his condition and what will happen next.
The absence of an announced execution date should provide no comfort. It should make Colombo more urgent, not less.
Sri Lanka must investigate those who set this in motion
But there is another responsibility that lies with the Sri Lankan government.
It must investigate what happened in Sri Lanka.
It should investigate the Islamists responsible for targeting Anojan, writing emails to his Saudi employer.
Did they merely report an offensive comment, or did they deliberately seek to have Anojan punished under Saudi Arabia’s far harsher laws?
These questions demand answers.
The Sri Lankan authorities should also investigate those who made the derogatory remarks against Hindu deities that preceded Anojan’s response. If Islamists provoked the religious confrontation and their conduct violated Sri Lankan law, they should be prosecuted.
Likewise, if those who subsequently reported Anojan deliberately sought to weaponise his words against him and committed an offence in doing so, they too should be prosecuted.
If people insulted Hindu deities, provoked a confrontation and then sought to have the person who responded punished under the laws of a foreign country, Sri Lanka has every reason to investigate the entire chain of events, and subsequently bring the full force of law against such religious zealots.
The real problem is blasphemy law
But the Anojan case should not end with one pardon. It should force the world to confront the larger problem of blasphemy laws.
Blasphemy laws do not merely regulate speech. They place religious offence into the criminal justice system, where accusations can trigger arrest, imprisonment and, in the most extreme cases, execution.
That creates a dangerous incentive.
A personal feud can be transformed into an allegation of religious offence.
A political opponent can be accused of insulting a religion.
A social-media rival can be reported.
A disgruntled employee can invoke religious sentiments against an employer.
A mob can manufacture outrage around an isolated statement.
Once the allegation is made, the accused person has to defend himself against a charge that can carry consequences wildly disproportionate to the original words.
And unlike a physical crime, the alleged “victim” of blasphemy can be an abstract religious sentiment.
The punishment, however, falls upon a living human being. And often, the mob never waits for the law to take its course. It is one of the reasons why so many blasphemy accused are lynched to death in Pakistan before the investigative agencies could establish the “offence.”
That imbalance should concern anyone who believes in freedom of speech. And Islamists have exploited this imbalance for far too long for the world to look the other way.
When blasphemy laws become weapons
The danger becomes particularly acute when blasphemy laws are used to settle personal scores.
An accusation of blasphemy can transform an ordinary dispute into a criminal matter. The complainant does not merely seek an apology or civil remedy; he can potentially place the accused at the mercy of police, prosecutors and courts.
The Anojan case is an especially stark example of why this deserves scrutiny. According to his brother, the matter was brought to his Saudi employer by individuals in Sri Lanka.
If that account is established, one has to ask whether Saudi Arabia’s blasphemy framework became a weapon in someone else’s dispute.
This is why such laws are dangerous even beyond their most extreme punishments.
A law designed to protect religious sentiment can become a tool to destroy the life of the person accused of offending it.
The Islamist hypocrisy over Mohammad Zubair
The reaction to Anojan’s case also exposes an extraordinary inconsistency among some Islamist voices in India.
They are now arguing that Anojan must accept the death penalty because he broke Saudi law and committed blasphemy against Prophet Muhammad.
Very well.
Then what happened to that principle when Mohammad Zubair, the co-founder of Alt News, was arrested in India over posts that offended Hindu religious sentiments?
Zubair’s supporters demanded his release and argued that an offensive social-media post should not result in prolonged imprisonment. The Supreme Court ultimately granted him relief and ended the proceedings in Uttar Pradesh.
There was nothing inherently wrong with that argument. A person accused of offending religious sentiments deserves due process. Punishment must be proportionate.
But precisely the same principle must apply to Anojan.
One cannot say “he broke Saudi law, therefore he deserves death” when the accused is a Hindu migrant worker and then say “religious offence should not result in imprisonment” when the accused is Mohammad Zubair.
India and Saudi Arabia have very different legal systems. Nobody is suggesting otherwise.
The issue is consistency.
If Zubair’s offence did not make his life forfeit, neither should Anojan’s remarks defending his faith.
Should a modern state kill a human being because he wrote an offensive sentence on Facebook?
That is the question that should be asked not only of Saudi Arabia, but of every country that retains blasphemy laws.
This should become a global campaign against blasphemy laws
The Anojan case should therefore become a rallying point for a worldwide campaign against blasphemy laws, especially those enforced by Islamic states, where Islamists often misuse the law to implicate non-Muslims and settle personal scores.
A campaign against laws that make religious offence a criminal matter punishable by imprisonment, mutilation or death.
Freedom of speech is meaningless if it exists only so long as nobody says anything that a powerful religious constituency finds offensive.
The right to express an unpopular, irreverent or even deeply offensive opinion is precisely what distinguishes freedom of expression from permission to repeat only socially approved views.
Islamists can protest in response. They can demand an apology. But their street veto cannot be facilitated with a law.
The State should not become an instrument for satisfying religious vengeance.
And certainly not an instrument for killing people.
Ironically, the Islamist bloodhounds who demand the execution of those they perceive as committing blasphemy often lean on liberal laws of democracies when Muslims are found committing the same offence. Therefore, a Zubair in India has thousands of Islamists in his support, calling for his release from jail even though he is accused of committing blasphemy against Hindu Gods and Goddesses.
No honour accorded to the dead is worth the life of the living
Anojan may have made an offensive remark. He may have exercised terrible judgment. He may even have violated Saudi law.
None of that makes his life worthless.
He deleted the comment and apologised. If he committed an offence, let him face proportionate justice. But execution is irreversible. Once a State kills a person, no apology can undo it, no reconsideration can reverse it, and no diplomatic regret can bring him back.
No honour accorded to the dead can justify taking the life of the living.
And that includes Prophet Muhammad.
Whatever honour Muslims accord to Prophet Muhammad, it cannot be worth the life of a 24-year-old Sri Lankan migrant worker. His honour does not depend upon Anojan’s death. No prophet requires the execution of a young man to establish his greatness, and no God becomes more sacred because a human being is killed in His name.
Sri Lanka must therefore fight relentlessly to save Anojan, investigate those who provoked him and those who reported him, and pursue every diplomatic avenue to secure his pardon.
But the world should not stop there.
Anojan Sivarasa’s case should become a warning about what happens when the State is given the power to punish blasphemy. It should become a campaign for the abolition of draconian blasphemy laws everywhere.
Because the freedom to speak means very little if one can be killed for speaking the wrong words.
Save Anojan. Abolish blasphemy laws. And never allow the honour attributed to the dead to become a justification for taking the life of the living.
