WUNRN
RIGHTS-IRAN:
Stoning for Adultery - More a Women's
Issue
Kimia Sanati
TEHRAN, Dec 4 (IPS) - Currently, in Iran, there are nine
women sentenced to death by stoning on charges of adultery, compared to two men
for the same offence -- highlighting the fact that this barbaric mode of
execution is primarily a women's issue.
Whether these 11 unfortunate
people can be saved from the brutality and humiliation involved depends on the
success of a campaign, launched two months ago, by a group of lawyers and
women's rights activists to have the stoning law abolished altogether from the
Islamic Penal Code of this country.
Stoning is more a women's issue
because, according to Islamic laws, a man can have four permanent wives and any
number of temporary wives.
When caught in adulterous relationships, men
can always claim to have been in a temporary marriage contract with the woman
involved --provided she is not already married to someone else. Temporary
marriage contracts, for hours or months or years, can be easily made between the
partners. A married woman cannot escape stoning in the same way.
"The
stoning law affects women more than men. So, as feminists, we naturally have to
address it as well as other issues, such as polygamy, lack of right of divorce
for women, forced marriages, domestic violence and poverty that greatly
contribute to situations leading to stoning. We also hope that the campaign to
abolish stoning can mobilise the women's movement," Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, a
feminist activist and advocacy group member of the ‘Campaign to Stop Stoning
Forever', told IPS.
"The nature of the feminist movement in Iran is
political because feminists have to target the laws, like (those on) polygamy
and stoning, that sustain the patriarchal view of the society. They have to
challenge the religious and political establishment that supports those laws,"
Abbasgholizadeh added.
Most women sentenced to stoning are those found
guilty of being accomplices in the murders of their husbands. In a few cases
married women have been found guilty of prostitution. If not married and found
guilty of illicit sex, one is sentenced to lashes the first three times. A
fourth occasion can lead to the death penalty as happened to Atefeh Sahaleh, a
16-year-old girl from Neka in Northern Iran who was hanged in August 2004.
Proving adultery is difficult under Islamic laws. For a stoning sentence
to be passed, there must be four confessions on four separate occasions by the
accused in front of a judge, or testimony by four eye witnesses, or ‘knowledge
of the judge'. Confessions can be retracted at any stage by the accused. In most
cases the knowledge of the judge serves as the basis for meting out the
sentence.
Hajieh, 35, from north-western town of Jolfa, has served five
years in prison for aiding the murder of her husband and has two more years to
go before facing a stoning sentence. Out on bail now, she claims that the man
who killed her husband, had attempted to rape her before the murder took place.
The man was sentenced to retribution-in-kind (qisas) for the killing.
When interrogated by the police, he accused Hajieh of being an accomplice to the
killing as well as having an affair with him. As an unmarried man, he received a
hundred lashes for illicit sex.
Hajieh spoke only the Azeri language and
no Farsi at the time of her arrest. She claims she did not understand the
technical term used by the judge to refer to adultery so she accepted the charge
and discovered the error only after the court ordered her to be stoned.
In 2004, Hajieh's stoning sentence was almost carried out. Invitations
to the public to participate were distributed in her small town, but the
execution was stopped in time when the executive judge realised the flaws in her
case. Chief Justice Ayatollah Shahroudi then stayed the execution of the
sentence. Hajieh has been tried once again and hopes to be acquitted of all
charges soon.
Iran made a verbal pledge to the European Union to stop
stoning more than a decade ago and there was a moratorium by the Chief Justice,
in December 2002, on execution by stoning. The Chief Justice has himself on
several occasions intervened to stay sentences from being executed.
Judiciary spokesman Mohammad Karimi Rad recently denied execution by
stoning and said such sentences were passed by courts but were not carried out.
But there are reports by eye witnesses of the secret stoning of Zahra Gholami in
Tehran's Evin prison in 1999. News of the stoning of a man, Abbas, and a woman,
Mahboubeh, in the north-eastern city of Mashad, in May, have also emerged
recently.
According to news reports the Mashad stoning was carried out
in a cemetery. The two were first ritually washed as for corpses being prepared
for burial and then wrapped in shrouds from head to toe. The woman was buried in
the ground up to her chest and the man up to his waist. A secretly congregated
crowd pelted them with pebbles until they were dead.
"We are campaigning
against stoning because of the brutality of the act. This kind of punishment is
against human dignity. We are not against legal punishment for people committing
crimes, but no human being in his right mind should take another person's life
so ruthlessly," Abbasgholizadeh said.
Officially launched on Oct. 1, the
campaign works through collecting signatures to support abolition of stoning.
Campaigners say even if the Chief Justice intervenes in every single case,
without a complete abolition, it will always be possible to reverse an order and
carry out a sentence.
"Stoning is regarded as a highly sensitive issue
by the regime and the religious and political establishment. There is so much
reaction from the international community and human rights organisations to
stoning news. This has made it taboo for journalists and news on the campaign is
not given coverage by the press as they have been repeatedly warned to avoid
it," a journalist told IPS.
In the face of such censorship, most
publicity for the campaign is made through websites and blogs. Women's Field
(meydane zanan), the campaign website in the Farsi and English langauges, was
recently filtered by authorities. A change of address was the campaigners'
response.
"Campaigners have a hard way ahead of them. The response from
the society as a whole to the issue of stoning is not so unified. Activists are
campaigning to abolish it but there are many, not only religious and political
hardliners, who don't mind the law," a social observer who did not want to be
named told IPS.
"In some areas, traditions hold very strong and the
stigma against the family of an adulterous woman is compelling. There is little
opposition to the idea of stoning in these places because people think a law
like that may prevent adultery and stabilise family life. In some cases the
families of the accused women might even take the matter into their own hands
and try to wipe off the shame by killing the guilty even before the law takes up
the matter. In men's case, if they are not involved with married women, there is
much greater toleration," he said.
"Taking personal action is what the
family of Shamameh (Malek) Ghorbani did last year in a village in Western Iran.
The man was killed by her brother and husband, but the woman herself survived
stab injuries -- only to be sentenced to stoning in spite of her denial of
adultery," the observer said.
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