Upon this rock

Now what was that quote from Nellie McClung?????

Eight women in Iran face death by stoning for adultery, Amnesty International has warned.

The human rights group says the Iranian legal system unfairly discriminates against women and is demanding an immediate moratorium on the penalty.

Under Iranian law women are buried up to their breasts before stones are dropped on them. Its penal code states the stones used should "not be large enough to kill the person by one or two strikes; nor should they be so small that they could not be defined as stones".

Women are more likely to be stoned to death because of their unequal treatment before the law and courts, in what Amnesty says is a clear violation of international standards.

A woman's testimony is worth half that of a man and the age of criminal responsibility is lower, making Iranian women especially vulnerable to conviction for adultery.

"Stoning people to death is an inhumane punishment, specifically designed to increase the suffering of the victim. The Iranian authorities should abolish stoning immediately, and should abandon the practice of executing people for committing adultery," Amnesty International UK's director Kate Allen said.

"Women are not treated equally in Iran, in the home and in the courts, and this means that they are particularly at risk.

"Women and men inside Iran are fighting for an end to this horrendous practice and in some cases they have met with success. But we must show them international support."

Oh yeah:

"No nation rises higher than its women." - Nellie McClung

I'M REALLY UPSET DATE: There's a petition. Sign it.

We, the undersigned are extremely alarmed that the punishment of stoning to death has been adopted by the country’s legal system as a reasonable and acceptable form of retribution.  Although, in December of 2002, your Excellency placed a ban on carrying out this type of sentence, in reality stonings have continued to take place in different parts of the country.  In May 2006, in the city of Mashhad, a woman Mahboubeh M. and a man Abbas H. were both stoned to death.

Prior to carrying out the stoning, prior to their death, these two people were treated as if they were dead.  In accordance with the Islamic tradition, their bodies were washed as if they were lifeless corpses, and wrapped in the kafan or white shroud.  Then their wrapped bodies were buried in the ground, Mahboubeh’s body was buried up to her shoulders, and Abbas was buried up to his waist.  The crowd, who had gathered to stone the two to death slowly as specified by law, then targeted them with their stones.  All this took place without any mention of it in the public media of the country.

Apart from the above mentioned two cases, at least eleven people, nine women and two men as listed below have been condemned to be stoned to death.  Their situation is grave.  It is also possible that there are other people who have been condemned to death by stoning and we are not aware of it.


1 Ms. Parisa A. (Adel Abad Prison, Shiraz)
2 Ms. Kobra N. (Tabriz Prison, Tabriz)
3 Ms. Kheireyeh V. (Sepidar Prison, Ahwaz)
4 Ms. Iran A. (Sepidar Prison, Ahwaz)
5 Ms.Malak (Shamameh) Ghorbani (Orumieh Prison, Orumieh)
6 Ms.Hajieh Esmailvand (Jolfa Prison, Jolfa)
7 Ms.Soghra Molawyi (Varamin Prison, Varamin)
8 Ms.Ashraf Kallhori (Evin Prison, Tehran)
9 Ms. Fatemeh (Tehran)
10 Mr.Abdollah Farivar (Sari Prison, Sari)-Male
11 Mr. Najaf A. (Abdel-Abad Prison, Shiraz)-Male

According to Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, signed and ratified by Iran in 1975, “in countries which have not abolished the death penalty, sentence of death may be imposed only for the most serious crimes”.  Article 7 of the same covenant states that “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment.”  Despite ratifying the above covenant, the Islamic penal code gives the judges the right to sentence the accused to death by stoning even when the crime of adultery has not been proved according to the same penal code’s standards and requirements.  Article #105 of the Islamic penal code gives the judges the absolute right to condemn the accused to death by stoning solely based on the judge’s subjective interpretation of the case.

Comments

[Michelle]

Somebody remind me how it is that organized religion is supposed to be "good" for anyone's rights?

... and then there's what religions in general do to women, which continually seeks new levels to sink to.

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

So....

I seem to remember feminists agitating for the Shah's overthrow

wouldn't it have been better, in the end, if he had never been overthrown?

let's count the ways ........

[Sebastian Stoker]

I agree with Michelle.

I cannot see any way in which organized religion helps advance the rights of any group other than the dominant/controlling one, which is always male. Throughout history religion was a prime tool of imperialism. It is an instrument used to subjugate people, and should be discarded along with all other shameful tools - apartheid/segregation, inquisitions and witch hunts, branding irons, iron maidens, chastity belts, dunking chairs, etc.

[Paul]

A nation is putting citizens to death by stoning them, to deliberately increase their suffering, and the problem here is that a greater percentage of stonings are of women?

Is someone missing the forest for the trees?

[Rachel MacDonald]

How do we sign the petition? It looks like a petition above. This is horrible, and should be acted on.

As for religion: I think it is naive to think that organized religion has brought only bad. There is so much goodness that exists only because of organized religion. However, I think we need to approach all our religions from the basic common value of love, or else we will have these kinds of problems.

I am sorry to say, as a Christian, that the Bible's Old Testament also says that a woman found in adultery should be stoned. However, Jesus overturned that in the New Testament, when they brought him the woman caught in adultery, to test him, and he told the men to look at her, and that they also wanted to do the same with her. He said to throw a stone only if they were without sin. All the men walked away. It was Jesus' way of saying: What is most important is LOVE, MERCY and HUMILITY - not being "right".

Anyone who reads their holy book (of whatever kind), giving primacy to love and kindness, is going to come to a very different conclusion than have the lawmakers in Iran. It is when people read with absolutism, make their interpretations infallible, and make themselves devoid of responsibility, that we come into problems like this.

Thanks, Rachel in Canada.

[sooey]

Too bad our governments are far too busy focusing on whether or not Iran is acquiring nuclear power (so they can justify an invasion) to lead an international shame campaign against the stoning of women.

[Antonia]

Once they nuke the place and find out there are no nukes, they'll say they ''liberated'' Iran's women.

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

Esteemed and Beautiful Moderator, Sooey Sweetie,

How is an Iran with nuclear weapons to be shamed over the stoning of women?

And in any case, what would such a shame campaign include?

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

http://ezralevant.com/

Donna Kennedy-Glans, Liberal saboteur

and in any case, wouldn't this sort of "feminist" sabotage such "shaming" campaigns, whether deliberately or not?

read the whole thing, and the links

[Paul]

Again, I read two men in that roster for such a barbaric execution.

Sooey, I'm thinking especially of you when I read your comments about "the stoning of women". I cannot disagree --and I'm not insensetive to the double-standards in that culture which lead to that point -- but we aren't talking about those here. We're talking about the method of execution itself. When you are so selective of which victims are worthy of your sympathy and advocacy, the appearance becomes one of a strange and arbitrary narcissism. It's self parody - the image of a woman wailing on the keel of the Titanic at the tragedy that women will die.

It's implicit in your statement that the women killed in this way are worth more than the men - that the men somehow deserve what they get, or that they are expendible enough that they don't really need your advocacy. And that - sooey, is the foundation of chauvanism - not reverse chauvanism - but the old-fashioned kind that grandma and great grandma would have suffered and enjoyed.

[Sebastian Stoker]

Good point Paul. Stoning is a barbaric practice that should be stopped, period.

However, the fact that such a cruel and savage means of punishment has both a religious and cultural source cannot go un-noted. Nor should we neglect to point out, at every opportunity ,that stoning is used as an act of terrorism against women.

[sooey]

None of that is implicit in my statements, Paul. You're implying all of it.

[Paul]

No sooey, it's the de facto statement. There are two men in that list, and you are upset about the "stoning of women" - not stoning in general.

You took the extra effort to spell out which of the people on that list we should feel for, and that is special pleading. Simply denying without accounting for what you said doesn't unsay it. I know it's ugly, but it's your baby, so why don't you simply own it?

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

Sooey Sweetie,

"Too bad our governments are far too busy focusing on whether or not Iran is acquiring nuclear power (so they can justify an invasion) to lead an international shame campaign against the stoning of women"

check out, in this context,

http://dharmaveer.blogspot.com/2009/03/case-for-massive-us-invasion-of-pak.html

this article lists reasons for an invasion of the Taliban- controlled areas of Pakistan near the Afghan border, and in second place comes:

"2. The Taliban represents the greatest danger to the ideal of women's rights in the world today. Under the Taliban, women were reduced to nothing more than domesticated animals. Again, this reason by itself would suffice for a serious military strike. The world cannot watch indifferently when women are degraded this way, and humanity is mocked."

you, or the Esteemed and Beautiful Moderator might almost have written that yourselves

this comes ahead of the nuclear issues in the author's list

Comments?