It’s a Crime in Iran to be a Woman
The Abuse of Women in Iran - by Stoning
This recent news article comes from writer Margaret Wente of the Globe and Mail as a follow up to my own article to about the horror that Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani is still facing. I made a mistake in my article, stating that only 12 women were on death row in Iran. There are actually 35 women on death row awaiting death by stoning. One woman was only 14 and has to wait on death row until she is 18 – the legal age for stoning in Iran. Another woman is pregnant and her death by stoning sentence has been delayed until she has her baby. It’s a crime to be a woman in Iran. Iran is a barbaric, medieval country and every woman deserves to be able to leave this medieval country that taunts the world with nuclear weapons and hates its women citizens. Not only do they ban the singing of women in Iran, but their laws against women are barbaric, absurd and ridiculous.
I’ve searched the internet for photographs to prove my point. Iran is a misogynist country that hates women. It is a crime to be a woman in Iran. Prove me wrong, I wish you could. I apologize if I have offended anyone with the photographs I have found. Iran’s treatment of women, its “dirty little secret” needs to be exposed.
And for Canadians reading my blog, don’t forget that Iran tortured, raped and killed a Canadian-Iranian photojournalist and then killed her in 2003. She was a Canadian citizen. This woman’s name is Zahra Kazemi.
If you haven’t signed the petition to help save Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, please sign the petition at www.freesakineh.org.
“Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian mother who was convicted of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning, is still alive, for now – saved by an international outcry of revulsion against state barbarism. But the story isn’t over. She’s still on death row. Once the heat dies down, the regime may simply choose to hang her, instead.
“This regime has taken so many lives,” says Maryam Namazie, an Iranian human-rights campaigner who now lives in London. “There’s got to be a time when it stops.”
Stoning in Iran
The Tabriz prison where Sakineh is locked up contains 200 other death-row cases, according to Ms. Namazie. Thirty-five are women who face death by stoning. One is Maryam Baagherzaade, 25, who has been in jail for the past four years. Her execution has been postponed because she got pregnant while on a short leave from prison. The regime usually waits to kill pregnant women until after they’ve had their babies.
Then there’s Azar Bagheri, 19. She was 14 when she was forced into an unwanted marriage. Her husband later pressed charges against her, claiming that she didn’t love him and that she had had a relationship with another man. She was arrested, convicted of having sex out of wedlock, and sentenced to death by stoning when she was only 15. She has been subjected to mock stoning on two occasions – buried up to her chest and threatened with death unless she co-operated. The death-row inmates include children, adolescents and 18 people who’ve been sentenced to hang for homosexuality. Last week, a 16-year-old girl killed herself in her cell to escape hanging.
the Hanging of Women in Iran
Even a suntan constitutes a crime against Islam. “The public expects us to act firmly and swiftly if we see any social misbehaviour by women, and men, who defy our Islamic values,” Tehran’s police chief, Hossein Sajedinia, announced in April. “In some areas of north Tehran, we can see many suntanned women and young girls who look like walking mannequins. We are not going to tolerate this situation and will first warn those found in this manner and then arrest and imprison them.” As Ms. Namazie puts it: “It’s a crime to be a woman in Iran.”
You might think the regime’s habit of murdering women for imaginary crimes would earn it universal condemnation – especially from places such as the United Nations. You would be wrong. In April, Iran was given a seat on the UN Commission on the Status of Women, whose goal is “gender equality and the advancement of women.”
The Stoning of Women in Iran
I put up these photographs which I found on various Human Rights websites with the sole purpose of exposing this horror to you. We’ve got the whiners and complainers who were arrested in Toronto for smashing windows at Starbucks, Tim Horton’s and Fran’s restaurant who are screaming about “their human rights abuse” during the G20 Summit. Now I want to show you what the real abuse of human rights looks like. Just so it’s “in your face” and you can do something about this and ACT UP about something that is REAL. And remember, we can protest all we want in Canada, but don’t you dare protest in Iran. The Iranian police aren’t as nice as our Canadian police and the people who torture in Iranian jails are even worse.
Related Posts
I watched The Stoning of Soraya M last night. Very moving. Stoning is barbaric and medieval. No justice system without equality before the law can be called a system of justice. This is not a cultural thing. It is universal. Rules for evidence are not rules unless they are applied equally. Until countries like Iran change their barbaric ways, they will be pariahs outside the world community. The Koran needs a more modern interpretation.
This is not an anti-Islam post.
Helloit is not a crime to be a woman in IRAN & and most of us are very happy to live in this solid.
all of the countries have some problems but it is not a crime to live or born there.
i am sorry for you and people like you.
I am an IRANIAN girl so i am one of the girls of BIG CYRUS & DARYUSH & if i could to choose my country when i was born i choose IRAN. I HOPE FOR YOU TO WRITE GOOD ARTICLE
GOOD LUCK
چو ایران مباشد تن من مباد
I understand totally that it is not literally a “crime” in Iran to be born a woman or live as a woman in Iran. I mean, you do not go to jail for being born with female genitalia. You are interpreting this article incorrectly. However, this article is about the lack of rights a woman in Iran has and the fact that when a woman in Iran asserts her freedom, she will be brutally suppressed by the regime. Any country which stones women (a barbaric, medieval practice indeed) would lead any rational human being on the planet earth to believe that Iran is not a safe place for a woman to live. I am sure you would agree.
One could also ask, why in the case of adultery is only the woman stoned to death and the man gets off (as usual).
Take for instance, that men have more rights than women in Iran. Take for instance that the people of Iran do not have the right to protest and all protests in Iran have so far been brutally suppressed by the government of Iran. Those in power in Iran feel they have the right to comment on the uprisings in the Middle East (very hypocritical) but have suppressed the people of Iran when they have wanted to express their desires for more freedom and democracy (this happened in 2009 and this year).
I know many Iranian people who hate the oppressive government there and hate the lack of religious freedom in the country. The fact that fashion police exist in Iran to monitor how young women dress is another example of what people of the female gender must endure.
Many extremely talented journalists, writers, intellectuals, filmmakers have either been tortured and imprisoned in Iran or have had to leave the country.
Even the Canadian Iranian journalist Zahra Kazemi was tortured, raped and killed by the Iranian authorities in 2003. Surely you would agree that the punishment for her crime of photographing a prison in Iran was immensely out of proportion to what she actually did.
I hope, for your sake, that in your marriage your husband does not grow tired of you one day when you reach, say, 50 years of age, and he decides he want to marry a younger woman so he sets it up that it appears that you have committed adultery and it is then decided you should be stoned to death, as in the case of Soraya M. This is what happens to many women in Iran. The situation of women in Iran is not a good situation, it is one consisting of arranged marriages, slavery in the service of men, the lack financial freedom and therefore power.
There are many good articles on this site written by many writers and I hope you enjoy them. Our writers do not need luck. We have the right to express our opinions and nothing on the internet is blocked as it is in Iran. The women of Iran need luck. Lots of it.
I went over this site and I conceive you have a lot of good info, saved to bookmarks (:.
that If they ‘saw’ Muslems before Islam they would never be ceerovtnd. I think that’s exactly your problem. May be you lived with all sort of bad muslems and you thought that the problem is with the religion not with people. let me also tell you one other thing. even those Moslems who threatened you on this blog because you was so harsh on this clement religion are ignorants (in religion)and give a bad impression about it exactly as you do. I think you’d rather avoid talking about all religions if you want to be representative of all people. If you keep on maintaining these outdated stereotypes on Islam (or any other) your blog will be a shelter for a atiests and they are, by the way, a minority not only in the Arab world, but everywhere.Ottman
These ignorant, plrooy-educated mullahs are the fundamentalists of Islam and, like fundamentalists in all religions, their knowledge & understanding of the faith they claim to represent is very limited. Thus their bigotry is passed on to the next & the next generation of poor boys plucked from the fields and given the priestly cloak of respectability. Because they feel their own ignorance, these mullahs re-inforce themselves by brute power instead of intelligent leadership.As the gap in education & sophistication between the people of Iran & their mullahs continues to widen, the mulllahs will resort more & more to brute force rather than finding the humility to admit their inadequacies.