Mainstream WeeklySeptember 23, 2026
Setting aside decades of ethnic bitterness and fratricide, Sri Lankans of all hues are joining hands in a desperate attempt to save a 27-year-old Tamil youth who faces execution in Saudi Arabia over a derogatory post on Prophet Mohammad.
The government has engaged a pricey lawyer in the Gulf kingdom while political and religious leaders are demanding that Sivarasa Anojan be spared the capital punishment and, if possible, returned to Sri Lanka.
Knowing Colombo’s limited diplomatic clout, one prominent Tamil leader has urged the Sri Lankan president to seek Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intervention to make a personal appeal to the Saudi monarch.
Despite the nationwide chorus for clemency, unthinkable when the Tamil separatist war was on, most Sri Lankans have their fingers crossed, knowing the grave situation which engineer Anojan finds himself in.
“Respect for Saudi Arabia’s sovereignty and legal system does not require silence in the face of disproportionate punishment,” commented former Sri Lankan foreign minister Ali Sabry.
“An offensive remark should not extinguish a person’s opportunity to repent, learn and rebuild his life,” said Sabry, not the only Muslim to rise to the occasion.
Rishad Bathiudeen, a leading Muslim MP, has visited Anojan’s distraught family at Kalmunai, a Muslim-majority area in the eastern district of Amparai where Tamils are the smallest ethnic minority.
After meeting the young man’s mother and brothers, he promised to bring together Muslim parliamentarians to petition Saudi authorities. He also vowed to net the influential All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulama in the process.
Believe it or not, the whole controversy erupted over a stray dog.
During this year’s annual Hindu pilgrimage to Kataramaga, when thousands walk some 400 km from Jaffna to the famed Murugan temple in southern Sri Lanka, the dog attached itself to the devotees, who promptly named it Subramani.
A video later showed a young Muslim kicking the dog in Kalmunai, creating revulsion. He was arrested and bailed. But the incident triggered an ugly war of words between sections of Muslims and Hindu Tamils.
Anojan, who had been employed in Saudi Arabia for about a year, plunged into the social media rage, posting an offensive statement about the Prophet.
He quickly realised the blunder and deleted the post. But it was too late. A friend in Sri Lanka clicked it and reposted it. To make matters worse, some Sri Lankans, said to be Muslims, alerted the Saudi government about the blasphemy.
Anojan was taken into custody. A Saudi court sentenced him on July 28 to five years imprisonment and fined him three million Saudi riyals, which equals $800,000. His mobile phone was confiscated.
But when a lawyer hired by Colombo tried to get the sentence reduced in late August, a Sharia court took over and awarded a shocked Anojan capital punishment instead – a reversal no one in Sri Lanka had bargained for.
Under Saudi law, the judicial fiat for execution must be confirmed by a five-judge appellate panel and by another five-judge bench in the Supreme Court, where the death sentence already given can be challenged within a month.
If the two panels uphold the death penalty, only the Saudi king can forgive Anojan.
The Sri Lankan foreign ministry says it has taken up the matter both with the Saudi embassy in Colombo as well as Saudi authorities through its mission in Riyadh.
Shanakiyan Rasamanickam of the Ilangai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK), the main Tamil party, is planning to raise the issue in parliament. He said Islamic leaders are pursuing a request for clemency on humanitarian grounds.
Another ITAK leader, S. Shritharan, while urging the government to save Anojan’s life, brought out the Tamil-Muslim fissures.
He admitted that Anojan had acted wrongly but underlined that he responded to a Sri Lankan social media user who made a derogatory reference to Lord Shiva.
“One person wrote disparagingly about the Shiva Lingam and is going to remain at home,” the Tamil MP told a meeting in Kilinochchi, his political base. “Anojan wrote a disparaging reply and is going to lose his head. Neither is acceptable.”
Mano Ganesan, an opposition MP who leads the Indian-Tamil community, urged President Anura Dissanayake to move Modi so that the Indian leader can take up the matter directly with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Dissanayake, a Marxist who is determined to expand his party’s following among the Tamils, has since met Anojan’s mother in Colombo.
Youths from the Indian-Tamil community allied with the Federation of Hindu Organisations marched through Hatton town in central Sri Lanka on Sunday calling for Anojan’s pardon.
A signature campaign is on at Amparai, where Anojan was born, demanding that he be forgiven. At least two leading lawyers, both Sinhalese, have promised to argue his case gratis.
Anojan’s misfortune had highlighted the long simmering tensions between Tamil and Muslim communities, both of which speak Tamil as their main language.
While the Tamil community dominates the country’s north including Jaffna and the eastern district of Batticaloa, Muslims are the single largest ethnic group in Amparai and Trincomalee on either side of Batticaloa along the east coast.
At their height of power, the Tamil Tigers drove away thousands of innocent Muslims from the north and massacred Muslims in the east. Muslims aligned with the military in turn killed equally innocent Tamil villagers in large numbers.
It is only in recent years that Tamil-Muslim tensions have eased in Sri Lanka.
One reason many have apprehensions vis-à-vis Anojan is because Saudi Arabia has executed Sri Lankans in the past.
In 2013, despite years of international campaigning, Saudi Arabian authorities executed a Sri Lankan domestic worker, Rizana Rafeek, after an infant in her care died.
Four Sri Lankans were executed in the Gulf country in 2007 for armed robbery, and two in 2009 over the death of an elderly Saudi woman.
In Anojan’s case, the crime he is accused of is considered far more serious.
“I have been living through my own death ever since I heard that my son will be killed,” says Anojan’s grieving mother in a video message.
Her desperation has moved many Sri Lankans belonging to different faiths as well as the government, turning a family’s problem into a national cause
But no one is quite sure if this alone will be enough to save Anojan.