Sri Lanka is preparing to petition Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Court to overturn a recent Court of Appeal ruling sentencing a migrant worker to death.
It was around the annual pilgrimage to Kataragama or the Kathirgamam temple in southern Sri Lanka, which draws scores of Hindu and Buddhist devotees. The man, who was arrested on charges of animal cruelty, was subsequently granted bail but the video meanwhile went viral on social media, provoking shrill comments from Tamils and Muslims. Anojan too had weighed in with a comment referring to Prophet Muhammed. Saudi courts deemed it blasphemous, sentencing him to five year’s imprisonment at first, and later increasing the punishment to death Although it was swiftly deleted and Anojan posted an apology. “The government is taking every possible step, in accordance with the Saudi law, to seek relief for Mr.
Anojan and for the commutation of his death sentence,” Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath told Parliament on Wednesday (October 7).
A Muslim man from Kalmunai, located in the island’s eastern Ampara district, was filmed attacking a dog — named Subramani, the temple’s presiding deity — which had followed Kataragama pilgrims for hundreds of kilometres, according to local media reports.
In a statement, Amnesty called upon Saudi authorities “to release him immediately and unconditionally given his charges stem entirely from his exercise of his right to freedom of expression. “As of 5 October 2026, at least 175 people had been executed in Saudi Arabia this year, including many for drug-related offences. Foreign nationals account for a majority of those executed, with at least 94 foreign nationals from more than 20 countries put to death this year alone,” it further said.
On September 21, 2026, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake met members of Anojan’s family, and assured them that the government will pursue “every possible legal and diplomatic channel” to take up his case. Earlier this week, rights watchdog Amnesty International urged Saudi Arabia’s authorities to “urgently overturn the death sentence” issued against Anojan. Saudi Arabia remains one of the world’s leading executioners, according to the statement.
The case, which has brought concerns about freedom of expression, migrant workers’ precarity, and the death penalty to the fore, stems from a social media comment posted in late June this year by Sivarasa Anojan, an engineer in his mid-twenties, employed in Saudi Arabia.
