Here Comes a Candle to Light you to Bed, And Here Comes the Chopper
to Chop off Your Head
by Avicenna
"Oranges and Lemons" say the bells of St. Clement's
"You owe me Five Farthings" say the bells of St. Martin's
"When will pay me?" Say the bells of Old Bailey
"When I Grow Rich!" Say the bells of Shoreditch
"When will that be?" Say the bells of Stepney
"I really don't know" Say the great bells of Bow
Here comes a Candle to Light you to Bed
And here comes a Chopper to Chop off your Head
There is a well known tourist spot for the traveller to the Middle
East. You may not think that there is a tourist industry in Saudi
Arabia but you forget one thing.
Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest travel destinations on the planet.
It is every Muslim's duty to go on pilgrimage to Mecca and why not
see the sights while you are there?
And one of the sites is the beautiful Qasr al-Masmak, which is an old
medieval fort which is next to the Grand Mosque. But when you go
visit there is something else to see.
A few hundred metres away is a plaza between the mosque and the fort.
It's ringed by a few benches and has palm trees. Sometimes there is
a souk (Market) there. But to the more trained eye there is one thing
you should notice.
There is a single drain in the middle. You will be advised to visit
during the week (Saturday to Thursday) and avoid it on Friday. It's
not the rush really. You see this place goes by many names. Al Safa
Square or Al Dirah Square. The Square of The Grand Mosque. The Chop
Chop Square.
You are now standing on the execution ground for the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia, where around 2 people a week meet their gruesome and
public end. It is one of the last places you can witness an execution
or public punishment. It is also where judicial amputation takes
place. If you were to go on Friday you can expect front row seats to
such a spectacle, in the same vein as the women who used to take
their knitting to the guillotine. And it's not where Rizana Nafeek,
a Sri Lankan maid; was beheaded on Wednesday, she was killed outside
Riyadh, but it's where many people like her have died. At the time
of her alleged crime she was a minor who shouldn't even be HIRED
let alone executed.
What passes for the judicial system in Saudi Arabia is less CSI and
more a lottery system aimed at terrorising people into compliance.
How much of a lottery system? Will Sampson was arrested in 2001, and
was forced to sign a false confession after a series of brutal
attacks on expats. Rather than admit to a "problem" with Islamic
Fundamentalism, the Saudi Arabian government decided to blame a
bunch of brits including Will Sampson. He was told that in exchange
for a confession they would deport him, so he signed a confession he
couldn't read and read it out in a language he didn't understand
on national TV. They instead sentenced him to death.
After 964 days of solitary confinement, mental torture and fear of
death, he was granted clemency. Not because the judicial system was
incorrect or because he received a fair trial (He wasn't even
allowed at retrials) but because he was part of a prisoner exchange
program with the USA. He was "saved" because he was a Brit. His
passport kept him safe. Had he had the misfortune to be Pakistani,
Bangladeshi, Indian, Somali, Filipino or indeed Sri Lankan he would
have been virtually doomed.
While that begs the question as to what my country is doing hanging
out with a country where such barbarism abounds, we aren't here to
discuss the politics of the UK and the KSA. We really should tell
them to fuck off but really that won't occur unless the KSA run out
of oil or there is a massive Muslim backlash against the "home"
of Islam.
What we are here to discuss Nafeek. In 2005 she was a seventeen year
old maid (Because you can totally hire children as virtual slaves in
Saudi Arabia). Oh don't worry! It's seen as charity! You see they
go to a third world nation and offer them a lot of money via exchange
rates. Don't you know? Most of India works for around $2 a day so
if you offer them $10 to work for you in the USA they would jump at
the chance! EXCEPT! You know as well as I do that $10 for a whole
work day is "frankly slave labour". The people they are enticing
to sign on are not well educated and are often enticed by money that
would mean a lot for their families. They don't know what they are
earning is practically shiny beads and mirrors. In 2005, her ward a
four month old baby died. The child's mother blames her for murder,
Nafeek says that the baby aspirated milk during a bottle feed. Oh
it's okay she signed a confession in Arabic. That well known Sri
Lankan language. Most of these confessions are pre-written and are
reliant on the fact that you cannot read what they say. Few non-arabs
speak Arabic and even fewer can read it. In fact most Muslims do not
speak Arabic as a first language. She also had no access to a lawyer,
she was allegedly defended by a man (Don't be silly! Women can't
be lawyers!) who she never met even once to discuss her case. She
never got to see any evidence or even make a statement to defend
herself. Clearly she shouldn't have worried her pretty little head
about things such as "the law". Oh and if you want to hear
something amusing? The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia utilises the Koran to
decide on such cases. You may be wondering, since it's easy to
check if a baby was smothered or has choked on a foreign body, but
you have to remember that forensic evidence is NOT PERMISSIBLE in
capital offences. Only witnesses and confessions because there was no
forensic science in the Koran. The ultimate joke is that Nafeek was
probably not guilty, it was just the word of a child who had no voice
versus people who did and who would have basically treated her as a
slave.
Safe World for Women raised awareness on her behalf. I agree with
them, it was a core breech of human rights and an astonishing one
consider she was a child at the time of the offence. The Government
of Sri Lanka is under protest at the moment with Sri Lanka holding
memorial services and protests against the Saudi government. The
government of Sri Lanka was actually assembling a delegation to the
KSA in order to lobby for her release. It was believed that Sri Lanka
would have paid her blood money had the KSA not executed her on the
Wednesday.
This is what thousands of people face in the KSA. Wahabbism's gift
to Islam is brutality and barbarism. We have to remember that more
Muslims live under these rules than we do.
How does it go? In the good olde days it was a proper little event
for the entire (male) part of the family. Nowadays I hear it's a
bit more subdued.
Normally Four Main people are present, the state executioner (a man
who is a celebrity! He even gets interviews where he talks about his
sword and family. But he is merely an instrument of the state. The
sword isn't evil, neither is the man. He merely is following orders
lest he fall victim to his own sword.) and two policemen who stand
with the plaintiff. You see at any time the plaintiff may
"forgive" the accused (usually for Blood Money -- Diyyah cost at
nearly 700,000 dollars in some cases). It's over in minutes, the
police usually form a line to separate the crowd from the scene with
the kneeling "victim" has a black bag tied around their neck near
the single drain. The accused stands with two policemen nearby. The
executioner confers one last time before making a small cut to the
back of the neck of the victim causing their head to jerk straight
from the pain followed by a much bigger swing.
The sword is razor sharp and the executioner does this nearly every
week, sometimes even twice. It's over in a single blow with gravity
claiming both sides of the body as blood pools out towards the drain.
It sounds like a wet (head of) cabbage falling off the table. Often
people say that "he died bravely", but dead is dead. Most people
don't care how they die so much as the fact they are dying. Many
die protesting their innocence to their grave, many offer everything
they have, many die in fear and in pain. According to the Saudi
government no mistakes are ever made because it's a divine system
of justice. People genuinely believe that those who die and those who
lose their limbs deserve what they get.
The crimes are read out and the body is usually taken away
immediately. Although friends used to tell me that in the early 90s
sometimes the body would be hung up to display. But you know...
progress is progress.
This whole process takes less than 10 minutes. In under half an hour
you wouldn't have known what had happened there with the only
evidence being a freshly cleaned plaza. If you feel particularly
peckish there are a few restaurants around, but leave early if you
want to get to the head of the queue.
What can we do? Nothing much, we are reliant on their oil. Until the
oil runs out a little part of Riyadh will always be called Chop Chop
Square. We can ask what our governments are doing hanging out with
such people but we know the answer. Most of us would rather be able
to get to the stores/mall a little cheaper. We need the KSA to power
our lifestyle and Muslims support the KSA because of Mecca. Until
both we and the Muslim people of the world unite in declaring the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a country of fanatics who subscribe to a
barbarian and brutal version of Islam rather than the elegance of Ibn
Sina or the verse of Kabir and Khayyam... Until there is abject
rebellion against the seat of Islam itself From Muslims...
Until we wrench apart the stranglehold of fanatics there will always
be a little part of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia called Chop Chop
Square.
Chop Chop Chop -- The Last Man's Dead
An Old Nursery Rhyme and Children's Game
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