Amnesty International has issued an urgent action report to save a Mallu dude from getting an eye gouged out by the famed prison surgeons of Saudi Arabia –
Puthen Veetil Abdul Latheef Noushad has reportedly been sentenced to have an eye removed. The sentence is said to have been passed to a higher court and if upheld, could be inflicted at any time.
According to press reports, the sentence is punishment for partially blinding another man during a fight in April 2003. He was apparently working at a petrol station in the city of Dammam, in the eastern region when he had an argument with a customer over payment. A fight broke out which left the other man with partial loss of sight. Puthen Veetil Abdul Latheef Noushad said that he was acting in self defence. He is detained in al-Dammam prison, Dammam.
<
p>The government of Kerala & India have entered the fray –
The Keralaites Association, a government agency looking after the welfare of migrants working in the Gulf, has asked the Indian foreign ministry to intervene. [link]The Indian government has asked Riyadh to pardon an Indian worker whose eye is set to be gouged out as punishment by a Saudi Arabian court, a minister told parliament on Thursday.
“India has sent a mercy petition to Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and to the governor of Dammam, where worker Puthen Veetil Abdul Latheef Noushad is imprisoned,” junior foreign minister E Ahamed told parliament. [link]
<
p>Noushad’s last remaining hope is an official pardon from the Saudi Royal’s –
The only option for the Noushad family now is to appeal to the Saudi king for royal clemency, which is granted during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.Saudi Arabia acceded to the Convention against Torture in 1997. However, Noushads case is the third known instance over the past year in which a Saudi court has issued a sentence of eye-gouging, Human Rights Watch said.
Sepia Mutiny’s been following the issue with many posts on the subject (indexed on Manish’s Syriana post). In recent years, the crap these workers endure has been slowly making its way into the spotlight and with luck, Noushad’s fate is hopefully more promising than it might have been not too long ago.
(FWIW – I suppose it will matter to some that I came across this story first via Little Green Footballs…. To them, I paraphrase Fareed Zakaria who was addressing another object of unblinking vilification by the Left — Somethings are true even if LGF reports it.)
Don’t you mean non-government agency?
Wonder why the Indian govt. is helping in this particular case?
M. Nam
More justice Saudi style.
Blood Money
Vinod, the fact you took this from LGF is irrelevant and I hope we don’t have a repeat of the other thread, but bold of you to mention your source again!
“An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind”
Vinod – any details of the “victim’s” nationality known?
I wouldn’t hold out much hope for sympathy from the Saudi Government. Here’s a story that was in the news recently:
Another story w/ more details on the nationality of the “victim”. Predictably, he was a Saudi National –
I care for universal adoption of a principle of justice that does not involve tit for tat. No matter what the severity of the crime nobody should have his or her life taken away nor be physically harmed. Imprisonment takes away the essence of life of anyone who has to undergo that punishment.
every passing day we know or don’t know the innumerable crimes that happen..
The Saudi Government wont dare gouge out the eyes of an American. Its a pity that India is such a lightweight country that people can fuck with Indians with impunity and get away with it.
Moornam: Is there anything in this world in which you dont see an angle of ‘appeasement’ of Indian Muslims versus ‘persecution’ of Indian Hindus. Post after post, you continue to look for angles which are not there and controversies which are started by you. In your ‘bipolar’ RSS world every controversy is reduced to Indian Hindus versus Indian Muslims.
Yes, that’s the reason Saudis don’t treat Americans like shit. Nothing to do with the fact they love Americans and worship white people is it?
It’s common racism. You’re right, Saudis won’t dare mess with an American, but not because they’re afraid of America. It’s because they DEPEND on America. And they have a woeful insecurity complex which tells them West is Best. Anything east of Saudi is inferior. What do you expect India to do, declare war? Australia couldn’t stop one of its own being executed in Singapore recently, what is India supposed to do about a guy losing an eye? At the end of the day, he’s chosen to live in a country with a particular legal system, India has nothing to do with it.
At the end of the day, he’s chosen to live in a country with a particular legal system, India has nothing to do with it.
For the son of an immigrant, its nice to see your sympathetic attitude towards other immigrants. Walk a day in the shoes of a poor Indian before you judge them for living in Saudi Arabia. If India did not have 350 million starving children, there would be no need for Indians to pump gas in Saudi Arabia for some fat inbred Saudi Sheikh.
If india was to follow it a deer’s horn would have been shoved up salmans ass. The fat cop in merath would be bitch slapped a few times in public. quarter of indian politicians would have been sentenced to death. If US were to apply this saudi arabia,yemen and pakistan would be facing american troops not iraq.
Actually, I am an immigrant myself. Which is why I feel this way (explained below). No lack of sympathy was intended, I simply meant to illustrate the fact that there’s nothing India can really do about this other than request a pardon. The legal system in Saudi Arabia is barbaric to us, living in normal countries. But India can’t argue that the man went there without knowing what he would face. Saudi is a shithole, but it’s common knowledge. Sure your point is very valid that if India didn’t have such abject poverty less people would leave.
But what I meant by feeling this way as an immigrant is that it angers me when more recalcitrant elements of the Asian community in Britain start criticising fundamental tenets of British culture. It’s a minority, but they’re vocal. Things we all hear about – protesting Christian festivals or advocating making the UK a Muslim state or whatever. It annoys me because they KNEW that happens when they came here. So, sadly, the same principal applies for Saudi. Don’t for a moment think I agree with this idiocy and I feel terrible for the poor guy, but India’s role in this is irrelevant. You seemed to be blaming India because it’s lightweight.
I think that the president—and many of his advisers—find it easy to embrace democracy but not the means to get there.
Oh, yes. So easy that he won an election by destroying the very defining concept of democracy itself, so easy his party is now famous for the democratic practice of gerrymandering, so easy his administration is famous (among former Nixon appointees) for his anti-democratic secrecy, his hostility to the press which includes paying friends to pose as journalists, so easy he is now known to have spearheaded a massive effort to spy on the American people in a total insult to our defining freedoms, of which some of us used to be somewhat proud. Look, this sentence had a lot wrong with it when Fareed wrote it, and it’s positively embarassing now. Does he know some reason we don’t why it should be accepted, let alone a matter of pride, that someone gives unusually inferior lip service to principles he clearly despises, let alone does not believe in? Maybe Fareed could point out some reason he imagines that leftist hatred of a man who led an illegal war of aggression and conquest, who did nothing to prevent or deal with IX/XI (other than the revenge-killing of more Afghani than the 3000 we lost), who wants to torture and secretly imprison and spy and do everything that a real American must loathe, and who humiliated his nation in the face of Katrina (which even now a congressman from Virginia assiduously assures the nation has moved past) is irrational? Is Fareed supposed to benefit from some great credit by admitting that many things Bush does are counter-productive? Why on earth should we trust Fareed when he can admit this and then turn around and say, “but here’s why we should give this admittedly less than perfect man an eleventh try”? Four years in the marines (to include a side-adventure in Iraq that did nothing to protect or uphold our consitituion, or any democratic tendencies whatsoever of Iraq) make it hard for us to despise our government, but seconds of Bush yammering about how Iraq would magically blossom into the kind of state we would never let it become (any more than we would with Mossadegh’s democratic Iran) by bombing, torturing and brutal occupation should be enough for any rational person to get a little less than loving.
I agree. He could’ve just as easily (if not easier) immigrated to Kuwait, UAE or Bahrain. I’ve lived in Kuwait before and trust me, it’s a far easier middle eastern country to live in than Saudi Arabia.
What really irks me that Naushad would have been dead meat regardless. Can we imagine the wrath he would have faced at the hands of his employer if he would have let the customer get away? It’s like being between a rock and a hard place; you either let the customer get away and face the employer’s music (no easy feat, of course) or either defend yourself and commit a crime in self defence and await execution.
And yes, I agree with Bong Breaker and A more original name…the way these cultures work is very barbaric and shocking. But all these foreign workers who go there are aware of this.
The worrying things here are the desperation and the poverty that makes people from India, Pakistan, the Phillipines etc go to the middle east and put their lives in danger. Clemency would make the most sense because this was a foreign worker who was doing his job and trying to save his life. However, he broke the law in the foreign country, regardless of how idiotic and barbaric it is. What do you do when you are stuck in a situation like this??!
“At the end of the day, he’s chosen to live in a country with a particular legal system, India has nothing to do with it.”
nice!! as long as indians do go there and work there, indian govt. should care about such individual cases. it is not an accident that americans do get away with a lot of stuff there – the legal system there only matters so much, if the person belongs to a country that has clout, that person has still a chance. This is precisely the reason indian govt should deal with issues like this. this is the way the countries say certain practices are unacceptable. India cannot change the legal system in many countries, but it can try to protect its citizens.
Speaking of India’s clout, here’s another country with a fair amount of clout:
Sorry to threadjack; I just felt this was something important.
Millions of poor, illiterate and ignorant Indian laborers who work in the Middle Eastern countries have no one to stand up for them. Little does India realize that it is their hard earned money that is stabilizing the economy of this corrupt nation. They get no respect from their employers who treat them like slaves, get kicked on their arses by the customs officer at the Indian airports who steal their cash, and neglected by their own Government who are spineless.
Our man Noushad has something else that is going against him, he is from South India or for the politicians in Delhi… a madrasi.. not worth a dime to them.
angrymf, do you honestly believe that the north still harbours such disdain towards south indians…. such prejudice may exist in certain pockets but by and large things seem to have improved. i believe that the govt would be complacent with any indian without deep pockets… its democratic that way
Update on Syriana-related news, via Boing Boing.
secularism is at work at IISC campus in bangalore. chief minister says it’s just an ‘unfortunate’ incident becuase the victims are not secular people.
The middle east is has long been a favored destination for a lot of Indians, especially from the south. I remember a Malayalam movie ‘Nadodikattu’ where the protagonists are down on their luck educated chaps who can’t get a decent job in kerala and they decide to illegally enter ‘Dubai’ to make their fortunes. The movie addressed what was a mass exodus of Keralites to the gulf because of the situation in India. And it is true that some of them made their fortunes in the Gulf, but at what cost? I lived in Qatar until i was 17 and my dad was one of the lucky ones to be recruited by the state owned oil company from Bharat Petroleum when they were clueless on what to do with their natural gas resources. I still witnessed first hand arab treatement of South Asians. There are the odd ones here and there that are decent human beings and those are the educated ones. One of the funny things about the company was that every individual who had an American or European passport had to be Senior Staff and hence they got the special privileges and get to be supervisors. This type of discrimination is prevalent all over the middle east, however Indians are slowly fighting back through sheer power of their education and qualifications. I’ve seen countless worker camps such as the one shown in Syriana.Its a reality,one that will take a couple of more years to work itself out.
cerco figa gratis scopa fighette vergini bagnate asmi www sex al fresco latina sverginate sangue dowload chiappe sexsy jeans sheepish bionde strip pompini estivi sborra con calze femmine focose orale hiv intenso ragazze fotti immagini ermafrodite video per masturbarsi foto ladyboy thailandesi sconfinato mediocre foto tailandesi porno ebony fotografia
The guy was pardoned when the Saudi King came to India last year