Save a teenage girl from beheading
We need your urgent help with donations to a legal fund and to write in support of a teenage girl, Rizana, facing beheading in Saudi Arabia. For donations every dollar helps so even small donations are vital. This petition has been created by Business Sri Lanka, a not-for-profit network (www.BusinessSriLanka.com) who are working closely with the Asian Human Rights Commission to raise support for Rizana. Please read on; Rizana left Sri Lanka as a child of 16 or 17 to work in Saudi Arabia and has been convicted to death by beheading without a fair trial. She has been sentenced to death for allegedly killing a baby. According to the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), there seems to be good grounds for appeal since the entire case was conducted without an interpretor and Rizana had no legal representation at the trial. According to information obtained by the Asian Human Rights Commission, Rizana went to work at the house of Mr. Naif Jiziyan Khalaf Al Otaibi whose wife had a new-born baby boy. Her working day began at 3am every day and finished late every night. A short time after she started working for this family she was assigned to bottle feed the infant who was by then four months old. Rizana had no experience in caring for such a young infant. She was left alone when bottle feeding the child. While she was feeding the child the boy started choking, as so often happens to babies and Rizana panicked and while shouting for help tried to sooth the child by feeling the chest, neck and face, doing whatever she could to help him. At her shouting the mother arrived but by then the baby was either unconscious or dead. The family members handed Rizana to the police, accusing her of strangling the baby. At the police station she was very harshly handled and did not have the help of a translator or anyone else to whom she could explain what had happened. She was made to sign a confession and later charges were filed in court of murder by strangulation. At a trial with no legal representation and no translator, the only evidence against Rizana was the confession she was made to sign at the police station â
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