WUNRN
Women Living
Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) is Launching the Global Campaign to Stop Stoning
and Killing Women!
Following
the International Day Against Violence Against Women, on 26 November 2007,
WLUML Will Launch the Campaign at
Bilgi
University, Istanbul, Turkey.
Women
Living Under Muslim Laws is launching the Global Campaign to ‘Stop Stoning and
Killing Women!’ to end the persistent misuse of religion and culture to justify
killing women as punishment for violating the ‘norms’ of sexual behaviour as
defined and imposed by vested interests. This Campaign is inspired by and grows
out of women’s struggles in their own locations to combat various
manifestations of this phenomenon, for instance in Pakistan, Indonesia, Iran
and Nigeria. The Campaign will support and enable women’s rights
advocates, national and transnational women’s movements to resist those forces which
politicize and mis-use culture and religion for subjugating women and the abuse
of their human rights.
The Campaign to Stop Stoning and Killing Women is initiated by a group of
activists, lawyers, journalists, and academics, who are committed to ending the
stoning and killing of women. Stoning to death is a legal form of punishment
for ‘adultery of married persons’ (zina al-Mohsena) in Afghanistan,
Iran, Nigeria (about one-third among 36 states), Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan,
and the United Arab Emirates. Recent cases of stoning by state authorities have
mostly occurred in Iran, where stoning is not limited to ‘adultery.’ Elsewhere,
such as Pakistan and Iraq, incidents of stoning have tended to be carried out
by communities, rather than the state. In Nigeria and UAE, sentences to death
by stoning have been overturned after strong international protests.
Women constitute nearly all those condemned to death by stoning. Why? Because
discriminatory laws and customs almost always assign more guilt to women than
to men in any manner of action that is seen as violating ‘norms’ of sexual
behaviour, especially any instance of alleged sexual relations outside marriage
(zina). Men are entitled to marry more than one woman and can use this
justification for sex outside marriage. They are also more mobile and can more
easily escape punishment.
In many other countries, women may also be killed by their own family and
community, should they be accused of contravening sexual mores, including
accusations of committing zina. According to the UN Special Rapporteur
on Extrajudicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions, so-called ‘honour killings’
(or rather, dishonourable killings of women) have occurred in countries as
diverse as Bangladesh, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan,
Morocco, Pakistan, Sweden, Turkey, Uganda and the United Kingdom.The increasing
trend to control women’s bodies is also evident in countries where women are
not stoned or killed, but are whipped for the same alleged ‘crime’ of zina for
example, in parts of Indonesia. The Global Campaign to Stop Stoning and
Killing Women urges the United Nations to investigate these serious
infringements of International Human Rights Law and the international community
to send a clear message that it is unacceptable for women to be tortured and
killed.
WLUML-Women Living Under Muslim Laws
International
Solidarity Network
Email: wluml@wluml.org
Website: http://www.wluml.org
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