| Women's Rights ARE Human Rights
Women's Rights ARE Human Rights
July 21, 2006 04:01 PM EDT (Updated: July 22, 2006 12:58 PM EDT)
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Malak Ghorbany, a woman from the Iranian region of Naghdeh, has been convicted of the crime of "adultery" for engaging in acts of intimacy with a man to whom she is not married. In a prison in the city of Urmieh, an Islmaic court sentenced her to death by public stoning ("sangsar").
This is not an unusual occurrence, nor is this the first time that a woman has been sentenced to public stoning in Kurdistan or various other regions ruled by the Islamic regime in Iran -- an ugly and inhumane method of execution, dating back to the dark ages and imposed by the Islamic Republic in the Third Millennium. It is a means to terrorize Iranian women as well as to suppress their voices and their requests for equality and justice.
Pressure from various international human rights organizations, combined with protests from rational and civilized persons around the world, forced the Islamic Republic to suspend public stonings. However, when Ahmadinejad and his militant cabinet took over the Iranian government, they reinstituted public stonings under the Sharia legal system as a "religious principle" against women.
In Kurdistan, where political executions are a daily reality, sentences of public hanging and stoning of women based on allegations of adultery or "acts incompatible with chastity" have proven equally effective in destroying entire cultures, societies, and lives while silencing anti-governmental sentiments and demands for women's rights. Only a few months ago, Nazanin Mahabad was sentenced to death by public hanging in the city of Karaj. This time, Malak Ghorbany is the face of Iranian women's political strife and Iran's devastating gender apartheid.
In a society where half of the citizens live under the sharp sword of medieval laws, and where the people are slaves to the barbaric laws designed for the abusive treatment of women, one can not help but do all that is possible, even imaginable, to fight for the restoration of women's and human rights. Human rights laws have banned the savage act of public stoning, and, as such, they prohibit the particular method of execution that the Islamic Republic has issued to Malak Ghorbany.
Let us ALL cry out for Nazanin Mahabad and Malak Ghorbany, as well as for all of the other Nazanins and Malaks who desperately need our help. Let us ALL express our outrage to prevent these barbaric executions. Let us -- ALL of us --take steps to ensure that no innocent woman will ever feel a rope around her neck or any stones launched at her helpless body by the hands of her own peers.
Let us -- ALL of us -- remember that women's rights ARE human rights.
"The movie reflects the reality of what has been happening for 100's of years and unless we break the "cycle", these practices will continue on for the rest of time. " Nazanin Afshin-Jam
Sangsar (Stoning) is a 35 minute movie which reflects violations of women's and young girls' rights in many parts of the Middle East. The story is not much different that what happened a month ago to a young Iraqi Kurdish girl who was stoned to death for being in love with a boy or the story of Nazanin Fatehi who was sentenced to death for defending herself during a rape attempt. |
