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.
Translated from Persian to English by Lily Mazahery
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To learn more about Malak Ghorbany's case, as well as to find general information about human rights abuses by the Islamic Republic of Iran, please visit:
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Comments: 11
Sveta
If it is the men who hold the power over the women in this (Iranian) society, why is it the men are not responsible for the 'crimes' in which their participation is required in order for it to be a crime?! Why is it the woman who is punished?!
It is, of course, because these men fear the reality that women do, in fact, hold some very real power and their patriarchal rule is so fragile that it will crumble if that power is acknowledged in any way.
love andlight
marinela
Please keep in mind that up until the Islamic fundamentalists took over the government in Iran, these types of practices and laws were unheard of!!! Iran/Persia was one of the most progressive secular nations on the planet and women had every right as their male counterparts. The best analogy that I can draw about how the past 27 years have been different for Iranian people is the following: Imagine if Switzerland decides to adopt slavery today and change its laws to mandate that the slave population are only half human, etc. That is what has happened to the people of Iran, particularly to Iranian women since the 1979 "revolution." These types of barbaric atrocities are NOT a part of Iranian/Persian culture. They are laws forced upon them by the Islamic occupiers of the country.
"women played an important role in everyday life in Achaemenid dynasty. They worked beside men in workshops and received the same salary as men. High-born women even exercised an influence on affairs of state. Female members of the Achaemenid royal family possessed their own estates, and documents survive showing their active involvement in management: letters relate to the shipment of grain, wine, and animals to palaces from distant land-holdings. The only limits on the extent of the authority exercised by the King's mother, for instance were set by the monarch himself. [2] Such traditions continued into Sassanid times, however with less extent. Purandokht, who were daughter of king Khosrau II ruled Persian empire for almost two years before resigning, and women can be seen on some Sassanid reliefs as well. In Shahnameh, the greatest persian poet and Iranologist, Ferdowsi, tried to offer a picture of persian women. More than twenty women appear in Shahnameh, all of them are wise, intelligent and respectable women. Two women, Homai and Gardieh, become kings of Iran in these stories. Ferdowsi himself married an educated and kind woman. The beauty of Persian girl and Persian mentality can be seen in numerous masterpieces of persian paintings and miniatures. Drawing a Persian girl dressed in colors with Persian wine at hand has been a classic style for portraying love. However nudity can not be seen in these works in contrast to western paintings with religious themes or ancient Greek style. Gender equality has been one of the basic principles of Persian culture for centuries. Lack of gender prejudice is one of the fundamental tenets of Zoroastrianism."
Source: Wikipedia
From Russia with love - Sveta