Δευτέρα 11 Ιουλίου 2011

Today is the International Day Against Stoning

MEPs condemn stoning sentence on Iranian Sakin...

July 11, 2011 By God Discussion Reporter

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani is still languishing in an Iranian prison, sentenced to death by stoning.

She was forced into a marriage that she did not want. She was forced to confess the "sin" of adultery and has been flogged 99 times. And she's been sentenced to death by the barbaric method of stoning.

Iranian authorities claim she the mother of two is guilty of murder, but due to international outcry, has stayed her execution. They are also deliberating whether or not they should hang her instead.

This grotesque form of punishment was documented in Stone Silence, a film focused on a stoning incident in a remote village in Afghanistan. It has also been documented in Women in Shroud, which focuses on Iran's execution of women by stoning. The film (see video below) follows activists' struggle to end the brutal practice of execution by stoning in Iran.

According to Women in Shroud, ever since the founding of the fundamentalist Islamic, Republic of Iran, the country has oppressed its female citizens. Within months of the Shah's ouster, the Islamo-fascists began to force women to observe Islamic dress code; many public places were sex-segregated; the legal age of marriage for girls was reduced to 13, and married women were barred from attending regular schools. Segregation of the sexes is brutally enforced. Any woman caught by revolutionary officials in a mixed-sex situation can be subject to virginity tests.

Adultery committed by women is punished by the accused being buried up to her chest, so she cannot move and having rocks thrown at her until she is dead. Iran's Penal Code prescribes execution by stoning and dictates that the stones are to be large enough to cause pain, but not so large as to kill the victim immediately.

The International Committee Against Stoning has organized today's International Day Against Stoning.

Falsely accused of murdering her husband, her only crime is that she is a woman in Iran. Her lawyer, Sajjad Houtan Kian, also remains in prison for having had the courage to defend her and other women with stoning sentences in Tabriz prison; he has been sentenced to four years imprisonment, been put under a lot of pressure and lost 20 kilos (44 pounds) as a result.